PART TWO

107. Hitherto I have devoted myself to giving a full and clear exposition

of this whole subject: and although I have not yet spoken of M. Bayle's

objections in particular, I have endeavoured to anticipate them, and to

suggest ways of answering them. But as I have taken upon myself the task of

meeting them in detail, not only because there will perhaps still be

passages calling for elucidation, but also because his arguments are

usually full of wit and erudition, and serve to throw greater light on this

controversy, it will be well to give an account of the chief objections

that are dispersed through his works, and to add my answers. At the

beginning I observed 'that God co-operates in moral evil, and in physical

evil, and in each of them both morally and physically; and that man

co-operates therein also morally and physically in a free and active way,

becoming in consequence subject to blame and punishment'. I have shown also

that each point has its own difficulty; but the greatest of these lies in

maintaining that God co-operates morally in moral evil, that is, in sin,

without being the originator of the sin, and even without being accessary

thereto.

108. He does this by _permitting_ it justly, and by _directing_ it wisely

towards the good, as I have shown in a manner that appears tolerably

intelligible. But as it is here principally that M. Bayle undertakes [183]

to discomfit those who maintain that there is nothing in faith which cannot

be harmonized with reason, it is also here especially I must show that my

dogmas are fortified (to make use of his own allegory) with a rampart, even

of reasons, which is able to resist the fire of his strongest batteries. He

has ranged them against me in chapter 144 of his _Reply to the Questions of

a Provincial_ (vol. III, p. 812), where he includes the theological

doctrine in seven propositions and opposes thereto nineteen philosophic

maxims, like so many large cannon capable of breaching my rampart. Let us

begin with the theological propositions.

109. I. 'God,' he says, 'the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely good,

holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a bliss

that can never either increase or diminish.' This proposition of M. Bayle's

is no less philosophical than theological. To say that God possesses a

'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of the term. One

may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one finds in being aware

of one's own perfections; and in this sense God possesses it always. But

when glory signifies that others become aware of these perfections, one may

say that God acquires it only when he reveals himself to intelligent

creatures; even though it be true that God thereby gains no new good, and

it is rather the rational creatures who thence derive advantage, when they

apprehend aright the glory of God.

110. II. 'He resolved freely upon the production of creatures, and he chose

from among an infinite number of possible beings those whom it pleased him

to choose, to give them existence, and to compose the universe of them,

while he left all the rest in nothingness.' This proposition is also, just

like the preceding one, in close conformity with that part of philosophy

which is called natural theology. One must dwell a little on what is said

here, that he chose the possible beings 'whom it pleased him to choose'.

For it must be borne in mind that when I say, 'that pleases me', it is as

though I were saying, 'I find it good'. Thus it is the ideal goodness of

the object which pleases, and which makes me choose it among many others

which do not please or which please less, that is to say, which contain

less of that goodness which moves me. Now it is only the genuinely good

that is capable of pleasing God: and consequently that which pleases God

most, and which meets his choice, is the best.

[184]

111. III. 'Human nature having been among the Beings that he willed to

produce, he created a man and a woman, and granted them amongst other

favours free will, so that they had the power to obey him; but he

threatened them with death if they should disobey the order that he gave

them to abstain from a certain fruit.' This proposition is in part

revealed, and should be admitted without difficulty, provided that _free

will_ be understood properly, according to the explanation I have given.

112. IV. 'They ate thereof nevertheless, and thenceforth they were

condemned, they and all their posterity, to the miseries of this life, to

temporal death and eternal damnation, and made subject to such a tendency

to sin that they abandoned themselves thereto endlessly and without

ceasing.' There is reason to suppose that the forbidden action by itself

entailed these evil results in accordance with a natural effect, and that

it was for that very reason, and not by a purely arbitrary decree, that God

had forbidden it: much as one forbids knives to children. The famous Fludde

or de Fluctibus, an Englishman, once wrote a book _De Vita, Morte et

Resurrectione_ under the name of R. Otreb, wherein he maintained that the

fruit of the forbidden tree was a poison: but we cannot enter into this

detail. It suffices that God forbade a harmful thing; one must not

therefore suppose that God acted here simply in the character of a

legislator who enacts a purely positive law, or of a judge who imposes and

inflicts a punishment by an order of his will, without any connexion

between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. And it is not

necessary to suppose that God in justifiable annoyance deliberately put a

corruption in the soul and the body of man, by an extraordinary action, in

order to punish him: much as the Athenians gave hemlock-juice to their

criminals. M. Bayle takes the matter thus: he speaks as if the original

corruption had been put in the soul of the first man by an order and

operation of God. It is that which calls forth his objection (_Reply to the

Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 178, p. 1218) 'that reason would

not commend the monarch who, in order to chastise a rebel, condemned him

and his descendants to have a tendency towards rebellion'. But this

chastisement happens naturally to the wicked, without any ordinance of a

legislator, and they become addicted to evil. If drunkards begot children

inclined to the same vice, by a natural consequence of what takes place in

bodies, that would be a punishment of their progenitors, but it would [185]

not be a penalty of law. There is something comparable to this in the

consequences of the first man's sin. For the contemplation of divine wisdom

leads us to believe that the realm of nature serves that of grace; and that

God as an Architect has done all in a manner befitting God considered as a

Monarch. We do not sufficiently know the nature of the forbidden fruit, or

that of the action, or its effects, to judge of the details of this matter:

nevertheless we must do God justice so far as to believe that it comprised

something other than what painters depict for us.

113. V. 'It has pleased him by his infinite mercy to deliver a very few men

from this condemnation; and, leaving them exposed during this life to the

corruption of sin and misery, he has given them aids which enable them to

obtain the never-ending bliss of paradise.' Many in the past have doubted,

as I have already observed, whether the number of the damned is so great as

is generally supposed; and it appears that they believed in the existence

of some intermediate state between eternal damnation and perfect bliss. But

we have no need of these opinions, and it is enough to keep to the ideas

accepted in the Church. In this connexion it is well to observe that this

proposition of M. Bayle's is conceived in accordance with the principles of

sufficient grace, given to all men, and sufficing them provided that they

have good will. Although M. Bayle holds the opposite opinion, he wished (as

he states in the margin) to avoid the terms that would not agree with a

system of decrees subsequent to the prevision of contingent events.

114. VI. 'He foresaw from eternity all that which should happen, he ordered

all things and placed them each one in its own place, and he guides and

controls them continually, according to his pleasure. Thus nothing is done

without his permission or against his will, and he can prevent, as seems

good to him, as much and as often as seems good to him, all that does not

please him, and in consequence sin, which is the thing in the world that

most offends him and that he most detests; and he can produce in each human

soul all the thoughts that he approves.' This thesis is also purely

philosophic, that is, recognizable by the light of natural reason. It is

opportune also, as one has dwelt in thesis II on _that which pleases_, to

dwell here upon _that which seems good_, that is, upon that which God finds

good to do. He can avoid or put away as 'seems good to him' all 'that does

not please him'. Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that some objects of

his aversion, such as certain evils, and especially sin, which his [186]

antecedent will repelled, could only have been rejected by his consequent

or decretory will, in so far as it was prompted by the rule of the best,

which the All-wise must choose after having taken all into account. When

one says 'that sin offends God most, and that he detests it most', these

are human ways of speaking. God cannot, properly speaking, be _offended_,

that is, injured, disturbed, disquieted or angered; and he _detests_

nothing of that which exists, in the sense that to detest something is to

look upon it with abomination and in a way that causes us disgust, that

greatly pains and distresses us; for God cannot suffer either vexation, or

grief or discomfort; he is always altogether content and at ease. Yet these

expressions in their true sense are justified. The supreme goodness of God

causes his antecedent will to repel all evil, but moral evil more than any

other: it only admits evil at all for irresistible superior reasons, and

with great correctives which repair its ill effects to good advantage. It

is true also that God could produce in each human soul all the thoughts

that he approves: but this would be to act by miracles, more than his most

perfectly conceived plan admits.

115. VII. 'He offers grace to people that he knows are destined not to

accept it, and so destined by this refusal to make themselves more criminal

than they would be if he had not offered them that grace; he assures them

that it is his ardent wish that they accept it, and he does not give them

the grace which he knows they would accept.' It is true that these people

become more criminal through their refusal than if one had offered them

nothing, and that God knows this. Yet it is better to permit their crime

than to act in a way which would render God himself blameworthy, and

provide the criminals with some justification for the complaint that it was

not possible for them to do better, even though they had or might have

wished it. God desires that they receive such grace from him as they are

fit to receive, and that they accept it; and he desires to give them in

particular that grace whose acceptance by them he foresees: but it is

always by a will antecedent, detached or particular, which cannot always be

carried out in the general plan of things. This thesis also is among the

number of those which philosophy establishes no less than revelation, like

three others of the seven that we have just stated here, the third, fourth

and fifth being the only ones where revelation is necessary.

[187]

116. Here now are the nineteen philosophic maxims which M. Bayle opposes to

the seven theological propositions.

I. 'As the infinitely perfect Being finds in himself a glory and a bliss

that can never either diminish or increase, his goodness alone has

determined him to create this universe: neither the ambition to be praised,

nor any interested motive of preserving or augmenting his bliss and his

glory, has had any part therein.' This maxim is very good: praises of God

do him no service, but they are of service to the men who praise him, and

he desired their good. Nevertheless, when one says that _goodness_ alone

determined God to create this universe, it is well to add that his GOODNESS

prompted him _antecedently_ to create and to produce all possible good; but

that his WISDOM made the choice and caused him to select the best

_consequently_; and finally that his POWER gave him the means to carry out

_actually_ the great design which he had formed.

117. II. 'The goodness of the infinitely perfect Being is infinite, and

would not be infinite if one could conceive of a goodness greater than

this. This characteristic of infinity is proper also to all his other

perfections, to love of virtue, hatred of vice, etc., they must be the

greatest one can imagine. (See M. Jurieu in the first three sections of the

_Judgement on Methods_, where he argues constantly upon this principle, as

upon a primary notion. See also in Wittich, _De Providentia Dei_, n. 12,

these words of St. Augustine, lib. I, _De Doctrina Christiana_, c. 7: "Cum

cogitatur Deus, ita cogitatur, ut aliquid, quo nihil melius sit atque

sublimius. Et paulo post: Nec quisquam inveniri potest, qui hoc Deum credat

esse, quo melius aliquid est.")'

This maxim is altogether to my liking, and I draw from it this conclusion,

that God does the very best possible: otherwise the exercise of his

goodness would be restricted, and that would be restricting his _goodness_

itself, if it did not prompt him to the best, if he were lacking in good

will. Or again it would be restricting his _wisdom_ and his _power_, if he

lacked the knowledge necessary for discerning the best and for finding the

means to obtain it, or if he lacked the strength necessary for employing

these means. There is, however, ambiguity in the assertion that love of

virtue and hatred of vice are infinite in God: if that were absolutely and

unreservedly true, in practice there would be no vice in the world. But

although each one of God's perfections is infinite in itself, it is

exercised only in proportion to the object and as the nature of things

prompts it. Thus love of the best in the whole carries the day over [188]

all other individual inclinations or hatreds; it is the only impulse whose

very exercise is absolutely infinite, nothing having power to prevent God

from declaring himself for the best; and some vice being combined with the

best possible plan, God permits it.

118. III. 'An infinite goodness having guided the Creator in the production

of the world, all the characteristics of knowledge, skill, power and

greatness that are displayed in his work are destined for the happiness of

intelligent creatures. He wished to show forth his perfections only to the

end that creatures of this kind should find their felicity in the

knowledge, the admiration and the love of the Supreme Being.'

This maxim appears to me not sufficiently exact. I grant that the happiness

of intelligent creatures is the principal part of God's design, for they

are most like him; but nevertheless I do not see how one can prove that to

be his sole aim. It is true that the realm of nature must serve the realm

of grace: but, since all is connected in God's great design, we must

believe that the realm of grace is also in some way adapted to that of

nature, so that nature preserves the utmost order and beauty, to render the

combination of the two the most perfect that can be. And there is no reason

to suppose that God, for the sake of some lessening of moral evil, would

reverse the whole order of nature. Each perfection or imperfection in the

creature has its value, but there is none that has an infinite value. Thus

the moral or physical good and evil of rational creatures does not

infinitely exceed the good and evil which is simply metaphysical, namely

that which lies in the perfection of the other creatures; and yet one would

be bound to say this if the present maxim were strictly true. When God

justified to the Prophet Jonah the pardon that he had granted to the

inhabitants of Nineveh, he even touched upon the interest of the beasts who

would have been involved in the ruin of this great city. No substance is

absolutely contemptible or absolutely precious before God. And the abuse or

the exaggerated extension of the present maxim appears to be in part the

source of the difficulties that M. Bayle puts forward. It is certain that

God sets greater store by a man than a lion; nevertheless it can hardly be

said with certainty that God prefers a single man in all respects to the

whole of lion-kind. Even should that be so, it would by no means follow

that the interest of a certain number of men would prevail over the [189]

consideration of a general disorder diffused through an infinite number of

creatures. This opinion would be a remnant of the old and somewhat

discredited maxim, that all is made solely for man.

119. IV. 'The benefits he imparts to the creatures that are capable of

felicity tend only to their happiness. He therefore does not permit that

these should serve to make them unhappy, and, if the wrong use that they

made of them were capable of destroying them, he would give them sure means

of always using them well. Otherwise they would not be true benefits, and

his goodness would be smaller than that we can conceive of in another

benefactor. (I mean, in a Cause that united with its gifts the sure skill

to make good use of them.)'

There already is the abuse or the ill effect of the preceding maxim. It is

not strictly true (though it appear plausible) that the benefits God

imparts to the creatures who are capable of felicity tend solely to their

happiness. All is connected in Nature; and if a skilled artisan, an

engineer, an architect, a wise politician often makes one and the same

thing serve several ends, if he makes a double hit with a single throw,

when that can be done conveniently, one may say that God, whose wisdom and

power are perfect, does so always. That is husbanding the ground, the time,

the place, the material, which make up as it were his outlay. Thus God has

more than one purpose in his projects. The felicity of all rational

creatures is one of the aims he has in view; but it is not his whole aim,

nor even his final aim. Therefore it happens that the unhappiness of some

of these creatures may come about _by concomitance_, and as a result of

other greater goods: this I have already explained, and M. Bayle has to

some extent acknowledged it. The goods as such, considered in themselves,

are the object of the antecedent will of God. God will produce as much

reason and knowledge in the universe as his plan can admit. One can

conceive of a mean between an antecedent will altogether pure and

primitive, and a consequent and final will. The _primitive antecedent will_

has as its object each good and each evil in itself, detached from all

combination, and tends to advance the good and prevent the evil. The

_mediate will_ relates to combinations, as when one attaches a good to an

evil: then the will will have some tendency towards this combination when

the good exceeds the evil therein. But the _final and decisive will_

results from consideration of all the goods and all the evils that enter

into our deliberation, it results from a total combination. This shows[190]

that a mediate will, although it may in a sense pass as consequent in

relation to a pure and primitive antecedent will, must be considered

antecedent in relation to the final and decretory will. God gives reason to

the human race; misfortunes arise thence by concomitance. His pure

antecedent will tends towards giving reason, as a great good, and

preventing the evils in question. But when it is a question of the evils

that accompany this gift which God has made to us of reason, the compound,

made up of the combination of reason and of these evils, will be the object

of a mediate will of God, which will tend towards producing or preventing

this compound, according as the good or the evil prevails therein. But even

though it should prove that reason did more harm than good to men (which,

however, I do not admit), whereupon the mediate will of God would discard

it with all its concomitants, it might still be the case that it was more

in accordance with the perfection of the universe to give reason to men,

notwithstanding all the evil consequences which it might have with

reference to them. Consequently, the final will or the decree of God,

resulting from all the considerations he can have, would be to give it to

them. And, far from being subject to blame for this, he would be

blameworthy if he did not so. Thus the evil, or the mixture of goods and

evils wherein the evil prevails, happens only _by concomitance_, because it

is connected with greater goods that are outside this mixture. This

mixture, therefore, or this compound, is not to be conceived as a grace or

as a gift from God to us; but the good that is found mingled therein will

nevertheless be good. Such is God's gift of reason to those who make ill

use thereof. It is always a good in itself; but the combination of this

good with the evils that proceed from its abuse is not a good with regard

to those who in consequence thereof become unhappy. Yet it comes to be by

concomitance, because it serves a greater good in relation to the universe.

And it is doubtless that which prompted God to give reason to those who

have made it an instrument of their unhappiness. Or, to put it more

precisely, in accordance with my system God, having found among the

possible beings some rational creatures who misuse their reason, gave

existence to those who are included in the best possible plan of the

universe. Thus nothing prevents us from admitting that God grants goods

which turn into evil by the fault of men, this often happening to men in

just punishment of the misuse they had made of God's grace. Aloysius [191]

Novarinus wrote a book _De Occultis Dei Beneficiis_: one could write one

_De Occultis Dei Poenis_. This saying of Claudian would be in place here

with regard to some persons:

_Tolluntur in altum,_ _Ut lapsu graviore ruant_.

But to say that God should not give a good which he knows an evil will will

abuse, when the general plan of things demands that he give it; or again to

say that he should give certain means for preventing it, contrary to this

same general order: that is to wish (as I have observed already) that God

himself become blameworthy in order to prevent man from being so. To

object, as people do here, that the goodness of God would be smaller than

that of another benefactor who would give a more useful gift, is to

overlook the fact that the goodness of a benefactor is not measured by a

single benefit. It may well be that a gift from a private person is greater

than one from a prince, but the gifts of this private person all taken

together will be much inferior to the prince's gifts all together. Thus one

can esteem fittingly the good things done by God only when one considers

their whole extent by relating them to the entire universe. Moreover, one

may say that the gifts given in the expectation that they will harm are the

gifts of an enemy, [Greek: hechthrôn dôra adôra],

_Hostibus eveniant talia dona meis._

But that applies to when there is malice or guilt in him who gives them, as

there was in that Eutrapelus of whom Horace speaks, who did good to people

in order to give them the means of destroying themselves. His design was

evil, but God's design cannot be better than it is. Must God spoil his

system, must there be less beauty, perfection and reason in the universe,

because there are people who misuse reason? The common sayings are in place

here: _Abusus non tollit usum_; there is _scandalum datum et scandalum

acceptum_.

120. V. 'A maleficent being is very capable of heaping magnificent gifts

upon his enemies, when he knows that they will make thereof a use that will

destroy them. It therefore does not beseem the infinitely good Being to

give to creatures a free will, whereof, as he knows for certain, they would

make a use that would render them unhappy. Therefore if he gives them free

will he combines with it the art of using it always opportunely, and

permits not that they neglect the practice of this art in any [192]

conjuncture; and if there were no sure means of determining the good use of

this free will, he would rather take from them this faculty, than allow it

to be the cause of their unhappiness. That is the more manifest, as free

will is a grace which he has given them of his own choice and without their

asking for it; so that he would be more answerable for the unhappiness it

would bring upon them than if he had only granted it in response to their

importunate prayers.'

What was said at the end of the remark on the preceding maxim ought to be

repeated here, and is sufficient to counter the present maxim. Moreover,

the author is still presupposing that false maxim advanced as the third,

stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole aim of God. If

that were so, perhaps neither sin nor unhappiness would ever occur, even by

concomitance. God would have chosen a sequence of possibles where all these

evils would be excluded. But God would fail in what is due to the universe,

that is, in what he owes to himself. If there were only spirits they would

be without the required connexion, without the order of time and place.

This order demands matter, movement and its laws; to adjust these to

spirits in the best possible way means to return to our world. When one

looks at things only in the mass, one imagines to be practicable a thousand

things that cannot properly take place. To wish that God should not give

free will to rational creatures is to wish that there be none of these

creatures; and to wish that God should prevent them from misusing it is to

wish that there be none but these creatures alone, together with what was

made for them only. If God had none but these creatures in view, he would

doubtless prevent them from destroying themselves. One may say in a sense,

however, that God has given to these creatures the art of always making

good use of their free will, for the natural light of reason is this art.

But it would be necessary always to have the will to do good, and often

creatures lack the means of giving themselves the will they ought to have;

often they even lack the will to use those means which indirectly give a

good will. Of this I have already spoken more than once. This fault must be

admitted, and one must even acknowledge that God would perhaps have been

able to exempt creatures from that fault, since there is nothing to

prevent, so it seems, the existence of some whose nature it would be always

to have good will. But I reply that it is not necessary, and that it was

not feasible for all rational creatures to have so great a perfection,[193]

and such as would bring them so close to the Divinity. It may even be that

that can only be made possible by a special divine grace. But in this case,

would it be proper for God to grant it to all, that is, always to act

miraculously in respect of all rational creatures? Nothing would be less

rational than these perpetual miracles. There are degrees among creatures:

the general order requires it. And it appears quite consistent with the

order of divine government that the great privilege of strengthening in the

good should be granted more easily to those who had a good will when they

were in a more imperfect state, in the state of struggle and of pilgrimage,

_in Ecclesia militante, in statu viatorum_. The good angels themselves were

not created incapable of sin. Nevertheless I would not dare to assert that

there are no blessed creatures born, or such as are sinless and holy by

their nature. There are perhaps people who give this privilege to the

Blessed Virgin, since, moreover, the Roman Church to-day places her above

the angels. But it suffices us that the universe is very great and very

varied: to wish to limit it is to have little knowledge thereof. 'But', M.

Bayle goes on, 'God has given free will to creatures capable of sinning,

without their having asked him for this grace. And he who gave such a gift

would be more answerable for the unhappiness that it brought upon those who

made use of it, than if he had granted it only in response to their

importunate prayers.' But importunity in prayers makes no difference to

God; he knows better than we what we need, and he only grants what serves

the interest of the whole. It seems that M. Bayle here makes free will

consist in the faculty for sinning; yet he acknowledges elsewhere that God

and the Saints are free, without having this faculty. However that may be,

I have already shown fully that God, doing what his wisdom and his goodness

combined ordain, is not answerable for the evil that he permits. Even men,

when they do their duty, are not answerable for consequences, whether they

foresee them or not.

121. VI. 'It is as sure a means of taking a man's life to give him a silk

cord that one knows certainly he will make use of freely to strangle

himself, as to plant a few dagger thrusts in his body. One desires his

death not less when one makes use of the first way, than when one employs

the second: it even seems as though one desires it with a more malicious

intention, since one tends to leave to him the whole trouble and the whole

blame of his destruction.'

[194]

Those who write treatises on Duties (De Officiis) as, for instance, Cicero,

St. Ambrose, Grotius, Opalenius, Sharrok, Rachelius, Pufendorf, as well as

the Casuists, teach that there are cases where one is not obliged to return

to its owner a thing deposited: for example, one will not give back a

dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is about to stab

someone. Let us pretend that I have in my hands the fatal draught that

Meleager's mother will make use of to kill him; the magic javelin that

Cephalus will unwittingly employ to kill his Procris; the horses of Theseus

that will tear to pieces Hippolytus, his son: these things are demanded

back from me, and I am right in refusing them, knowing the use that will be

made of them. But how will it be if a competent judge orders me to restore

them, when I cannot prove to him what I know of the evil consequences that

restitution will have, Apollo perchance having given to me, as to

Cassandra, the gift of prophecy under the condition that I shall not be

believed? I should then be compelled to make restitution, having no

alternative other than my own destruction: thus I cannot escape from

contributing towards the evil. Another comparison: Jupiter promises Semele,

the Sun Phaeton, Cupid Psyche to grant whatever favour the other shall ask.

They swear by the Styx,

_Di cujus jurare timent et fallere Numen_.

One would gladly stop, but too late, the request half heard,

_Voluit Deus ora loquentis_

_Opprimere; exierat jam vox properata sub auras_.

One would gladly draw back after the request was made, making vain

remonstrances; but they press you, they say to you: 'Do you make oaths that

you will not keep?' The law of the Styx is inviolable, one must needs

submit to it; if one has erred in making the oath, one would err more in

not keeping it; the promise must be fulfilled, however harmful it may be to

him who exacts it. It would be ruinous to you if you did not fulfil it. It

seems as though the moral of these fables implies that a supreme necessity

may constrain one to comply with evil. God, in truth, knows no other judge

that can compel him to give what may turn to evil, he is not like Jupiter

who fears the Styx. But his own wisdom is the greatest judge that he can

find, there is no appeal from its judgements: they are the decrees of

destiny. The eternal verities, objects of his wisdom, are more [195]

inviolable than the Styx. These laws and this judge do not constrain: they

are stronger, for they persuade. Wisdom only shows God the best possible

exercise of his goodness: after that, the evil that occurs is an inevitable

result of the best. I will add something stronger: To permit the evil, as

God permits it, is the greatest goodness.

_Si mala sustulerat, non erat ille bonus._

One would need to have a bent towards perversity to say after this that it

is more malicious to leave to someone the whole trouble and the whole blame

of his destruction. When God does leave it to a man, it has belonged to him

since before his existence; it was already in the idea of him as still

merely possible, before the decree of God which makes him to exist. Can

one, then, leave it or give it to another? There is the whole matter.

122. VII. 'A true benefactor gives promptly, and does not wait to give

until those he loves have suffered long miseries from the privation of what

he could have imparted to them at first very easily, and without causing

any inconvenience to himself. If the limitation of his forces does not

permit him to do good without inflicting pain or some other inconvenience,

he acquiesces in this, but only regretfully, and he never employs this way

of rendering service when he can render it without mingling any kind of

evil in his favours. If the profit one could derive from the evils he

inflicted could spring as easily from an unalloyed good as from those

evils, he would take the straight road of unalloyed good, and not the

indirect road that would lead from the evil to the good. If he showers

riches and honours, it is not to the end that those who have enjoyed them,

when they come to lose them, should be all the more deeply afflicted in

proportion to their previous experience of pleasure, and that thus they

should become more unhappy than the persons who have always been deprived

of these advantages. A malicious being would shower good things at such a

price upon the people for whom he had the most hatred.'

(Compare this passage of Aristotle, _Rhetor._, 1. 2, c. 23, p. m. 446:

[Greek: hoion ei doiê an tis tini hina aphelomenos leipêsêi; hothen kai

tout' eirêtai,]

[Greek: pollois ho daimôn ou kat' eunoian pherôn]

[Greek: Megala didôsin eutychêmat', all' hina]

[Greek: tas symphoras labôsin epiphanesteras.]

[196]

Id est: Veluti si quis alicui aliquid det, ut (postea) hoc (ipsi) erepto

(ipsum) afficiat dolore. Unde etiam illud est dictum:

_Bona magna multis non amicus dat Deus,_

_Insigniore ut rursus his privet malo._)

All these objections depend almost on the same sophism; they change and

mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for men, he

loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. Yet he allows men

to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods that tend

towards their destruction; and when he makes someone happy, it is after

many sufferings: where is his affection, where is his goodness or again

where is his power? Vain objections, which suppress the main point, which

ignore the fact that it is of God one speaks. It is as though one were

speaking of a mother, a guardian, a tutor, whose well-nigh only care is

concerned with the upbringing, the preservation, the happiness of the

person in question, and who neglect their duty. God takes care of the

universe, he neglects nothing, he chooses what is best on the whole. If in

spite of all that someone is wicked and unhappy, it behoved him to be so.

God (so they say) could have given happiness to all, he could have given it

promptly and easily, and without causing himself any inconvenience, for he

can do all. But should he? Since he does not so, it is a sign that he had

to act altogether differently. If we infer from this either that God only

regretfully, and owing to lack of power, fails to make men happy and to

give the good first of all and without admixture of evil, or else that he

lacks the good will to give it unreservedly and for good and all, then we

are comparing our true God with the God of Herodotus, full of envy, or with

the demon of the poet whose iambics Aristotle quotes, and I have just

translated into Latin, who gives good things in order that he may cause

more affliction by taking them away. That would be trifling with God in

perpetual anthropomorphisms, representing him as a man who must give

himself up completely to one particular business, whose goodness must be

chiefly exercised upon those objects alone which are known to us, and who

lacks either aptitude or good will. God is not lacking therein, he could do

the good that we would desire; he even wishes it, taking it separately, but

he must not do it in preference to other greater goods which are opposed to

it. Moreover, one has no cause to complain of the fact that usually [197]

one attains salvation only through many sufferings, and by bearing the

cross of Jesus Christ. These evils serve to make the elect imitators of

their master, and to increase their happiness.

123. VIII. 'The greatest and the most substantial glory that he who is the

master of others can gain is to maintain amongst them virtue, order, peace,

contentment of mind. The glory that he would derive from their unhappiness

can be nothing but a false glory.'

If we knew the city of God just as it is, we should see that it is the most

perfect state which can be devised; that virtue and happiness reign there,

as far as is possible, in accordance with the laws of the best; that sin

and unhappiness (whose entire exclusion from the nature of things reasons

of the supreme order did not permit), are well-nigh nothing there in

comparison with the good, and even are of service for greater good. Now

since these evils were to exist, there must needs be some appointed to be

subject to them, and we are those people. If it were others, would there

not be the same appearance of evil? Or rather, would not these others be

those known as We? When God derives some glory from the evil through having

made it serve a greater good, it was proper that he should derive that

glory. It is not therefore a false glory, as would be that of a prince who

overthrew his state in order to have the honour of setting it up again.

124. IX. 'The way whereby that master can give proof of greatest love for

virtue is to cause it, if he can, to be always practised without any

mixture of vice. If it is easy for him to procure for his subjects this

advantage, and nevertheless he permits vice to raise its head, save that he

punishes it finally after having long tolerated it, his affection for

virtue is not the greatest one can conceive; it is therefore not infinite.'

I am not yet half way through the nineteen maxims, and already I am weary

of refuting, and making the same answer always. M. Bayle multiplies

unnecessarily his so-called maxims in opposition to my dogmas. If things

connected together may be separated, the parts from their whole, the human

kind from the universe, God's attributes the one from the other, power from

wisdom, it may be said that God _can cause_ virtue to be in the world

without any mixture of vice, and even that he can do so _easily_. But,

since he has permitted vice, it must be that that order of the universe

which was found preferable to every other plan required it. One must

believe that it is not permitted to do otherwise, since it is not [198]

possible to do better. It is a hypothetical necessity, a moral necessity,

which, far from being contrary to freedom, is the effect of its choice.

_Quae rationi contraria sunt, ea nec fieri a Sapiente posse credendum est_.

The objection is made here, that God's affection for virtue is therefore

not the greatest which can be conceived, that it is not _infinite_. To that

an answer has already been given on the second maxim, in the assertion that

God's affection for any created thing whatsoever is proportionate to the

value of the thing. Virtue is the noblest quality of created things, but it

is not the only good quality of creatures. There are innumerable others

which attract the inclination of God: from all these inclinations there

results the most possible good, and it turns out that if there were only

virtue, if there were only rational creatures, there would be less good.

Midas proved to be less rich when he had only gold. And besides, wisdom

must vary. To multiply one and the same thing only would be superfluity,

and poverty too. To have a thousand well-bound Vergils in one's library,

always to sing the airs from the opera of Cadmus and Hermione, to break all

the china in order only to have cups of gold, to have only diamond buttons,

to eat nothing but partridges, to drink only Hungarian or Shiraz

wine--would one call that reason? Nature had need of animals, plants,

inanimate bodies; there are in these creatures, devoid of reason, marvels

which serve for exercise of the reason. What would an intelligent creature

do if there were no unintelligent things? What would it think of, if there

were neither movement, nor matter, nor sense? If it had only distinct

thoughts it would be a God, its wisdom would be without bounds: that is one

of the results of my meditations. As soon as there is a mixture of confused

thoughts, there is sense, there is matter. For these confused thoughts come

from the relation of all things one to the other by way of duration and

extent. Thus it is that in my philosophy there is no rational creature

without some organic body, and there is no created spirit entirely detached

from matter. But these organic bodies vary no less in perfection than the

spirits to which they belong. Therefore, since God's wisdom must have a

world of bodies, a world of substances capable of perception and incapable

of reason; since, in short, it was necessary to choose from all the things

possible what produced the best effect together, and since vice entered in

by this door, God would not have been altogether good, altogether wise if

he had excluded it.

[199]

125. X. 'The way to evince the greatest hatred for vice is not indeed to

allow it to prevail for a long time and then chastise it, but to crush it

before its birth, that is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. A king,

for example, who put his finances in such good order that no malversation

was ever committed, would thus display more hatred for the wrong done by

factionaries than if, after having suffered them to batten on the blood of

the people, he had them hanged.'

It is always the same song, it is anthropomorphism pure and simple. A king

should generally have nothing so much at heart as to keep his subjects free

from oppression. One of his greatest interests is to bring good order into

his finances. Nevertheless there are times when he is obliged to tolerate

vice and disorders. He has a great war on his hands, he is in a state of

exhaustion, he has no choice of generals, it is necessary to humour those

he has, those possessed of great authority with the soldiers: a Braccio, a

Sforza, a Wallenstein. He lacks money for the most pressing needs, it is

necessary to turn to great financiers, who have an established credit, and

he must at the same time connive at their malversations. It is true that

this unfortunate necessity arises most often from previous errors. It is

not the same with God: he has need of no man, he commits no error, he

always does the best. One cannot even wish that things may go better, when

one understands them: and it would be a vice in the Author of things if he

wished to change anything whatsoever in them, if he wished to exclude the

vice that was found there. Is this State with perfect government, where

good is willed and performed as far as it is possible, where evil even

serves the greatest good, comparable with the State of a prince whose

affairs are in ruin and who escapes as best he can? Or with that of a

prince who encourages oppression in order to punish it, and who delights to

see the little men with begging bowls and the great on scaffolds?

126. XI. 'A ruler devoted to the interests of virtue, and to the good of

his subjects, takes the utmost care to ensure that they never disobey his

laws; and if he must needs chastise them for their disobedience, he sees to

it that the penalty cures them of the inclination to evil, and restores in

their soul a strong and constant tendency towards good: so far is he from

any desire that the penalty for the error should incline them more and more

towards evil.'

[200]

To make men better, God does all that is due, and even all that can be done

on his side without detriment to what is due. The most usual aim of

punishment is amendment; but it is not the sole aim, nor that which God

always intends. I have said a word on that above. Original sin, which

disposes men towards evil, is not merely a penalty for the first sin; it is

a natural consequence thereof. On that too a word has been said, in the

course of an observation on the fourth theological proposition. It is like

drunkenness, which is a penalty for excess in drinking and is at the same

time a natural consequence that easily leads to new sins.

127. XII. 'To permit the evil that one could prevent is not to care whether

it be committed or not, or is even to wish that it be committed.'

By no means. How many times do men permit evils which they could prevent if

they turned all their efforts in that direction? But other more important

cares prevent them from doing so. One will rarely resolve upon adjusting

irregularities in the coinage while one is involved in a great war. And the

action of an English Parliament in this direction a little before the Peace

of Ryswyck will be rather praised than imitated. Can one conclude from this

that the State has no anxiety about this irregularity, or even that it

desires it? God has a far stronger reason, and one far more worthy of him,

for tolerating evils. Not only does he derive from them greater goods, but

he finds them connected with the greatest goods of all those that are

possible: so that it would be a fault not to permit them.

128. XIII. 'It is a very great fault in those who govern, if they do not

care whether there be disorder in their States or not. The fault is still

greater if they wish and even desire disorder there. If by hidden and

indirect, but infallible, ways they stirred up a sedition in their States

to bring them to the brink of ruin, in order to gain for themselves the

glory of showing that they have the courage and the prudence necessary for

saving a great kingdom on the point of perishing, they would be most

deserving of condemnation. But if they stirred up this sedition because

there were no other means than that, of averting the total ruin of their

subjects and of strengthening on new foundations, and for several

centuries, the happiness of nations, one must needs lament the unfortunate

necessity (see above, pp. 146, 147, what has been said of the force of[201]

necessity) to which they were reduced, and praise them for the use that

they made thereof.'

This maxim, with divers others set forth here, is not applicable to the

government of God. Not to mention the fact that it is only the disorders of

a very small part of his kingdom which are brought up in objection, it is

untrue that he has no anxiety about evils, that he desires them, that he

brings them into being, to have the glory of allaying them. God wills order

and good; but it happens sometimes that what is disorder in the part is

order in the whole. I have already stated this legal axiom: _Incivile est

nisi tota lege inspecta judicare_. The permission of evils comes from a

kind of moral necessity: God is constrained to this by his wisdom and by

his goodness; _this necessity is happy_, whereas that of the prince spoken

of in the maxim is _unhappy_. His State is one of the most corrupt; and the

government of God is the best State possible.

129. XIV. 'The permission of a certain evil is only excusable when one

cannot remedy it without introducing a greater evil; but it cannot be

excusable in those who have in hand a remedy more efficacious against this

evil, and against all the other evils that could spring from the

suppression of this one.'

The maxim is true, but it cannot be brought forward against the government

of God. Supreme reason constrains him to permit the evil. If God chose what

would not be the best absolutely and in all, that would be a greater evil

than all the individual evils which he could prevent by this means. This

wrong choice would destroy his wisdom and his goodness.

130. XV. 'The Being infinitely powerful, Creator of matter and of spirits,

makes whatever he wills of this matter and these spirits. There is no

situation or shape that he cannot communicate to spirits. If he then

permitted a physical or a moral evil, this would not be for the reason that

otherwise some other still greater physical or moral evil would be

altogether inevitable. None of those reasons for the mixture of good and

evil which are founded on the limitation of the forces of benefactors can

apply to him.'

It is true that God makes of matter and of spirits whatever he wills; but

he is like a good sculptor, who will make from his block of marble only

that which he judges to be the best, and who judges well. God makes of

matter the most excellent of all possible machines; he makes of spirits the

most excellent of all governments conceivable; and over and above all that,

he establishes for their union the most perfect of all harmonies, [202]

according to the system I have proposed. Now since physical evil and moral

evil occur in this perfect work, one must conclude (contrary to M. Bayle's

assurance here) that _otherwise a still greater evil would have been

altogether inevitable_. This great evil would be that God would have chosen

ill if he had chosen otherwise than he has chosen. It is true that God is

infinitely powerful; but his power is indeterminate, goodness and wisdom

combined determine him to produce the best. M. Bayle makes elsewhere an

objection which is peculiar to him, which he derives from the opinions of

the modern Cartesians. They say that God could have given to souls what

thoughts he would, without making them depend upon any relation to the

body: by this means souls would be spared a great number of evils which

only spring from derangement of the body. More will be said of this later;

now it is sufficient to bear in mind that God cannot establish a system

ill-connected and full of dissonances. It is to some extent the nature of

souls to represent bodies.

131. XVI. 'One is just as much the cause of an event when one brings it

about in moral ways, as when one brings it about in physical ways. A

Minister of State, who, without going out of his study, and simply by

utilizing the passions of the leaders of a faction, overthrew all their

plots, would thus be bringing about the ruin of this faction, no less than

if he destroyed it by a surprise attack.'

I have nothing to say against this maxim. Evil is always attributed to

moral causes, and not always to physical causes. Here I observe simply that

if I could not prevent the sin of others except by committing a sin myself,

I should be justified in permitting it, and I should not be accessary

thereto, or its moral cause. In God, every fault would represent a sin; it

would be even more than sin, for it would destroy Divinity. And it would be

a great fault in him not to choose the best. I have said so many times. He

would then prevent sin by something worse than all sins.

132. XVII. 'It is all the same whether one employ a necessary cause, or

employ a free cause while choosing the moments when one knows it to be

determined. If I imagine that gunpowder has the power to ignite or not to

ignite when fire touches it, and if I know for certain that it will be

disposed to ignite at eight o'clock in the morning, I shall be just as much

the cause of its effects if I apply the fire to it at that hour, as I

should be in assuming, as is the case, that it is a necessary cause. [203]

For where I am concerned it would no longer be a free cause. I should be

catching it at the moment when I knew it to be necessitated by its own

choice. It is impossible for a being to be free or indifferent with regard

to that to which it is already determined, and at the time when it is

determined thereto. All that which exists exists of necessity while it

exists. [Greek: To einai to on hotan êi, kai to mê einai hotan mê êi,

anankê.] "Necesse est id quod est, quando est, esse; et id quod non est,

quando non est, non esse": Arist., _De Interpret._, cap. 9. The Nominalists

have adopted this maxim of Aristotle. Scotus and sundry other Schoolmen

appear to reject it, but fundamentally their distinctions come to the same

thing. See the Jesuits of Coimbra on this passage from Aristotle, p. 380

_et seq._)'

This maxim may pass also; I would wish only to change something in the

phraseology. I would not take 'free' and 'indifferent' for one and the same

thing, and would not place 'free' and 'determined' in antithesis. One is

never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise; one is

always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side than on

another: but one is never necessitated to the choice that one makes. I mean

here a _necessity_ absolute and metaphysical; for it must be admitted that

God, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a _moral_ necessity. It must

be admitted also that one is necessitated to the choice by a hypothetical

necessity, when one actually makes the choice; and even before one is

necessitated thereto by the very truth of the futurition, since one will do

it. These hypothetical necessities do no harm. I have spoken sufficiently

on this point already.

133. XVIII. 'When a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion, it

is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to kill

all the rest, not excepting even babes and sucklings.'

It seems to be assumed here that there are a hundred thousand times more

damned than saved, and that children dying unbaptized are included among

the former. Both these points are disputed, and especially the damnation of

these children. I have spoken of this above. M. Bayle urges the same

objection elsewhere (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,

ch. 178, p. 1223): 'We see clearly', he says, 'that the Sovereign who

wishes to exercise both justice and clemency when a city has revolted must

be content with the punishment of a small number of mutineers, and [204]

pardon all the rest. For if the number of those who are chastised is as a

thousand to one, in comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot

be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be

accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration,

and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would

prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take

revenge were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to

the service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost

all the rebels. Criminals who are executed are considered to expiate their

crimes so completely by the loss of their life, that the public requires

nothing more, and is indignant when executioners are clumsy. These would be

stoned if they were known deliberately to give repeated strokes of the axe;

and the judges who are present at the execution would not be immune from

danger if they were thought to take pleasure in this evil sport of the

executioners, and to have surreptitiously urged them to practise it.' (Note

that this is not to be understood as strictly universal. There are cases

where the people approve of the slow killing of certain criminals, as when

Francis I thus put to death some persons accused of heresy after the

notorious Placards of 1534. No pity was shown to Ravaillac, who was

tortured in divers horrible ways. See the _French Mercury_, vol. I, fol.

m., 455 _et seq._ See also Pierre Matthieu in his _History of the Death of

Henry IV_; and do not forget what he says on page m. 99 concerning the

discussion by the judges with regard to the torture of this parricide.)

'Finally it is an exceptionally notorious fact that Rulers who should be

guided by St. Paul, I mean who should condemn to the extreme penalty all

those whom he condemns to eternal death, would be accounted enemies of the

human kind and destroyers of their communities. It is incontestable that

their laws, far from being fitted, in accordance with the aim of

legislators, to uphold society, would be its complete ruin. (Apply here

these words of Pliny the Younger, _Epist._, 22, lib. 8: Mandemus memoriae

quod vir mitissimus, et ob hoc quoque maximus, Thrasea crebro dicere

solebat, Qui vitia odit, homines odit.)' He adds that it was said of the

laws of Draco, an Athenian lawgiver, that they had not been written with

ink, but with blood, because they punished all sins with the extreme

penalty, and because damnation is a penalty even worse than death. But it

must be borne in mind that damnation is a consequence of sin. Thus I [205]

once answered a friend, who raised as an objection the disproportion

existing between an eternal punishment and a limited crime, that there is

no injustice when the continuation of the punishment is only a result of

the continuation of the sin. I will speak further on this point later. As

for the number of the damned, even though it should be incomparably greater

among men than the number of the saved, that would not preclude the

possibility that in the universe the happy creatures infinitely outnumber

those who are unhappy. Such examples as that of a prince who punishes only

the leaders of rebels or of a general who has a regiment decimated, are of

no importance here. Self-interest compels the prince and the general to

pardon the guilty, even though they should remain wicked. God only pardons

those who become better: he can distinguish them; and this severity is more

consistent with perfect justice. But if anyone asks why God gives not to

all the grace of conversion, the question is of a different nature, having

no relation to the present maxim. I have already answered it in a sense,

not in order to find God's reasons, but to show that he cannot lack such,

and that there are no opposing reasons of any validity. Moreover, we know

that sometimes whole cities are destroyed and the inhabitants put to the

sword, to inspire terror in the rest. That may serve to shorten a great war

or a rebellion, and would mean a saving of blood through the shedding of

it: there is no decimation there. We cannot assert, indeed, that the wicked

of our globe are punished so severely in order to intimidate the

inhabitants of the other globes and to make them better. Yet an abundance

of reasons in the universal harmony which are unknown to us, because we

know not sufficiently the extent of the city of God, nor the form of the

general republic of spirits, nor even the whole architecture of bodies, may

produce the same effect.

134. XIX. 'Those physicians who chose, among many remedies capable of

curing a sick man, whereof divers were such as they well knew he would take

with enjoyment, precisely that one which they knew he would refuse to take,

would vainly urge and pray him not to refuse it; we should still have just

cause for thinking that they had no desire to cure him: for if they wished

to do so, they would choose for him among those good medicines one which

they knew he would willingly swallow. If, moreover, they knew that

rejection of the remedy they offered him would augment his sickness to[206]

the point of making it fatal, one could not help saying that, despite all

their exhortations, they must certainly be desirous of the sick man's

death.'

God wishes to save all men: that means that he would save them if men

themselves did not prevent it, and did not refuse to receive his grace; and

he is not bound or prompted by reason always to overcome their evil will.

He does so sometimes nevertheless, when superior reasons allow of it, and

when his consequent and decretory will, which results from all his reasons,

makes him resolve upon the election of a certain number of men. He gives

aids to all for their conversion and for perseverance, and these aids

suffice in those who have good will, but they do not always suffice to give

good will. Men obtain this good will either through particular aids or

through circumstances which cause the success of the general aids. God

cannot refrain from offering other remedies which he knows men will reject,

bringing upon themselves all the greater guilt: but shall one wish that God

be unjust in order that man may be less criminal? Moreover, the grace that

does not serve the one may serve the other, and indeed always serves the

totality of God's plan, which is the best possible in conception. Shall God

not give the rain, because there are low-lying places which will be thereby

incommoded? Shall the sun not shine as much as it should for the world in

general, because there are places which will be too much dried up in

consequence? In short, all these comparisons, spoken of in these maxims

that M. Bayle has just given, of a physician, a benefactor, a minister of

State, a prince, are exceedingly lame, because it is well known what their

duties are and what can and ought to be the object of their cares: they

have scarce more than the one affair, and they often fail therein through

negligence or malice. God's object has in it something infinite, his cares

embrace the universe: what we know thereof is almost nothing, and we desire

to gauge his wisdom and his goodness by our knowledge. What temerity, or

rather what absurdity! The objections are on false assumptions; it is

senseless to pass judgement on the point of law when one does not know the

matter of fact. To say with St. Paul, _O altitudo divitiarum et

sapientiae,_ is not renouncing reason, it is rather employing the reasons

that we know, for they teach us that immensity of God whereof the Apostle

speaks. But therein we confess our ignorance of the facts, and we

acknowledge, moreover, before we see it, that God does all the best [207]

possible, in accordance with the infinite wisdom which guides his actions.

It is true that we have already before our eyes proofs and tests of this,

when we see something entire, some whole complete in itself, and isolated,

so to speak, among the works of God. Such a whole, shaped as it were by the

hand of God, is a plant, an animal, a man. We cannot wonder enough at the

beauty and the contrivance of its structure. But when we see some broken

bone, some piece of animal's flesh, some sprig of a plant, there appears to

be nothing but confusion, unless an excellent anatomist observe it: and

even he would recognize nothing therein if he had not before seen like

pieces attached to their whole. It is the same with the government of God:

that which we have been able to see hitherto is not a large enough piece

for recognition of the beauty and the order of the whole. Thus the very

nature of things implies that this order in the Divine City, which we see

not yet here on earth, should be an object of our faith, of our hope, of

our confidence in God. If there are any who think otherwise, so much the

worse for them, they are malcontents in the State of the greatest and the

best of all monarchs; and they are wrong not to take advantage of the

examples he has given them of his wisdom and his infinite goodness, whereby

he reveals himself as being not only wonderful, but also worthy of love

beyond all things.

135. I hope it will be found that nothing of what is comprised in the

nineteen maxims of M. Bayle, which we have just considered, has been left

without a necessary answer. It is likely that, having often before

meditated on this subject, he will have put there all his strongest

convictions touching the moral cause of moral evil. There are, however,

still sundry passages here and there in his works which it will be well not

to pass over in silence. Very often he exaggerates the difficulty which he

assumes with regard to freeing God from the imputation of sin. He observes

_(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 161, p. 1024) that Molina,

if he reconciled free will with foreknowledge, did not reconcile the

goodness and the holiness of God with sin. He praises the sincerity of

those who bluntly declare (as he claims Piscator did) that everything is to

be traced back to the will of God, and who maintain that God could not but

be just, even though he were the author of sin, even though he condemned

innocence. And on the other side, or in other passages, he seems to show

more approval of the opinions of those who preserve God's goodness at [208]

the expense of his greatness, as Plutarch does in his book against the

Stoics. 'It was more reasonable', he says, 'to say' (with the Epicureans)

'that innumerable parts' (or atoms flying about at haphazard through an

infinite space) 'by their force prevailed over the weakness of Jupiter and,

in spite of him and against his nature and will, did many bad and

irrational things, than to agree that there is neither confusion nor

wickedness but he is the author thereof.' What may be said for both these

parties, Stoics and Epicureans, appears to have led M. Bayle to the [Greek:

epechein] of the Pyrrhonians, the suspension of his judgement in respect of

reason, so long as faith is set apart; and to that he professes sincere

submission.

136. Pursuing his arguments, however, he has gone as far as attempting

almost to revive and reinforce those of the disciples of Manes, a Persian

heretic of the third century after Christ, or of a certain Paul, chief of

the Manichaeans in Armenia in the seventh century, from whom they were

named Paulicians. All these heretics renewed what an ancient philosopher of

Upper Asia, known under the name of Zoroaster, had taught, so it is said,

of two intelligent principles of all things, the one good, the other bad, a

dogma that had perhaps come from the Indians. Among them numbers of people

still cling to their error, one that is exceedingly prone to overtake human

ignorance and superstition, since very many barbarous peoples, even in

America, have been deluded by it, without having had need of philosophy.

The Slavs (according to Helmold) had their Zernebog or black God. The

Greeks and Romans, wise as they seem to be, had a Vejovis or Anti-Jupiter,

otherwise called Pluto, and numerous other maleficent divinities. The

Goddess Nemesis took pleasure in abasing those who were too fortunate; and

Herodotus in some passages hints at his belief that all Divinity is

envious; which, however, is not in harmony with the doctrine of the two

principles.

137. Plutarch, in his treatise _On Isis and Osiris_, knows of no writer

more ancient than Zoroaster the magician, as he calls him, that is likely

to have taught the two principles. Trogus or Justin makes him a King of the

Bactrians, who was conquered by Ninus or Semiramis; he attributes to him

the knowledge of astronomy and the invention of magic. But this magic was

apparently the religion of the fire-worshippers: and it appears that he

looked upon light and heat as the good principle, while he added the [209]

evil, that is to say, opacity, darkness, cold. Pliny cites the testimony of

a certain Hermippus, an interpreter of Zoroaster's books, according to whom

Zoroaster was a disciple in the art of magic to one named Azonacus; unless

indeed this be a corruption of Oromases, of whom I shall speak presently,

and whom Plato in the _Alcibiades_ names as the father of Zoroaster. Modern

Orientals give the name Zerdust to him whom the Greeks named Zoroaster; he

is regarded as corresponding to Mercury, because with some nations

Wednesday _(mercredi)_ takes its name from him. It is difficult to

disentangle the story of Zoroaster and know exactly when he lived. Suidas

puts him five hundred years before the taking of Troy. Some Ancients cited

by Pliny and Plutarch took it to be ten times as far back. But Xanthus the

Lydian (in the preface to Diogenes Laertius) put him only six hundred years

before the expedition of Xerxes. Plato declares in the same passage, as M.

Bayle observes, that the magic of Zoroaster was nothing but the study of

religion. Mr. Hyde in his book on the religion of the ancient Persians

tries to justify this magic, and to clear it not only of the crime of

impiety but also of idolatry. Fire-worship prevailed among the Persians and

the Chaldaeans also; it is thought that Abraham left it when he departed

from Ur of the Chaldees. Mithras was the sun and he was also the God of the

Persians; and according to Ovid's account horses were offered in sacrifice

to him,

_Placat equo Persis radiis Hyperiona cinctum,_

_Ne detur celeri victima tarda Deo._

But Mr. Hyde believes that they only made use of the sun and fire in their

worship as symbols of the Divinity. It may be necessary to distinguish, as

elsewhere, between the Wise and the Multitude. There are in the splendid

ruins of Persepolis or of Tschelminaar (which means forty columns)

sculptured representations of their ceremonies. An ambassador of Holland

had had them sketched at very great cost by a painter, who had devoted a

considerable time to the task: but by some chance or other these sketches

fell into the hands of a well-known traveller, M. Chardin, according to

what he tells us himself. It would be a pity if they were lost. These ruins

are one of the most ancient and most beautiful monuments of the earth; and

in this respect I wonder at such lack of curiosity in a century so curious

as ours.

[210]

138. The ancient Greeks and the modern Orientals agree in saying that

Zoroaster called the good God Oromazes, or rather Oromasdes, and the evil

God Arimanius. When I pondered on the fact that great princes of Upper Asia

had the name of Hormisdas and that Irminius or Herminius was the name of a

god or ancient hero of the Scythian Celts, that is, of the Germani, it

occurred to me that this Arimanius or Irminius might have been a great

conqueror of very ancient time coming from the west, just as Genghis Khan

and Tamburlaine were later, coming from the east. Arimanius would therefore

have come from the north-west, that is, from Germania and Sarmatia, through

the territory of the Alani and Massagetae, to raid the dominions of one

Ormisdas, a great king in Upper Asia, just as other Scythians did in the

days of Cyaxares, King of the Medes, according to the account given by

Herodotus. The monarch governing civilized peoples, and working to defend

them against the barbarians, would have gone down to posterity, amongst the

same peoples, as the good god; but the chief of these devastators will have

become the symbol of the evil principle: that is altogether reasonable. It

appears from this same mythology that these two princes contended for long,

but that neither of them was victorious. Thus they both held their own,

just as the two principles shared the empire of the world according to the

hypothesis attributed to Zoroaster.

139. It remains to be proved that an ancient god or hero of the Germani was

called Herman, Arimanius or Irminius. Tacitus relates that the three tribes

which composed Germania, the Ingaevones, the Istaevones and the Herminones

or Hermiones, were thus named from the three sons of Mannus. Whether that

be true or not, he wished in any case to indicate that there was a hero

named Herminius, from whom he was told the Herminones were named.

Herminones, Hermenner, Hermunduri all mean the same, that is, Soldiers.

Even in the Dark Ages Arimanni were _viri militares,_ and there is _feudum

Arimandiae_ in Lombard law.

140. I have shown elsewhere that apparently the name of one part of

Germania was given to the whole, and that from these Herminones or

Hermunduri all the Teutonic peoples were named _Hermanni_ or _Germani_. The

difference between these two words is only in the force of the aspiration:

there is the same difference of initial letter between the _Germani_ of the

Latins and _Hermanos_ of the Spaniards, or in the _Gammarus_ of the Latins

and the _Hummer_ (that is, marine crayfish) of the Low Germans. [211]

Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the

whole: so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet this,

according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and the

Swiss. Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the

Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that

it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given _ob metum_. In fact it

signifies a warrior: _Heer_, _Hari_ is army, whence comes _Hariban_, or

'call to Haro', that is, a general order to be with the army, since

corrupted into _Arrièreban_. Thus Hariman or Ariman, German _Guerre-man_,

is a soldier. For as _Hari_, _Heer_ means army, so _Wehr_ signifies arms,

_Wehren_ to fight, to make war, the word _Guerre_, _Guerra_ coming

doubtless from the same source. I have already spoken of the _feudum

Arimandiae_: not only did Herminones or Germani signify the same, but also

that ancient Herman, so-called son of Mannus, appears to have been given

this name as being pre-eminently a warrior.

141. Now it is not the passage in Tacitus only which indicates for us this

god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among these

peoples, since Charlemagne found and destroyed near the Weser the column

called _Irminsäule_, erected in honour of this god. And that combined with

the passage in Tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that it was not that

famous Arminius who was an enemy of the Romans, but a much greater and more

ancient hero, that this cult concerned. Arminius bore the same name as

those who are called Hermann to-day. Arminius was not great enough, nor

fortunate enough, nor well enough known throughout Germania to attain to

the honour of a public cult, even at the hands of remote tribes, like the

Saxons, who came long after him into the country of the Cherusci. And our

Arminius, taken by the Asiatics for the evil God, provides ample

confirmation of my opinion. For in these matters conjectures confirm one

another without any logical circle, when their foundations tend towards one

and the same end.

142. It is not beyond belief that the Hermes (that is, Mercury) of the

Greeks is the same Herminius or Arimanius. He may have been an inventor or

promoter of the arts and of a slightly more civilized life among his own

people and in the countries where he held supremacy, while amongst his

enemies he was looked upon as the author of confusion. Who knows but that

he may have penetrated even into Egypt, like the Scythians who in [212]

pursuit of Sesostris came nearly so far. Theut, Menes and Hermes were known

and revered in Egypt. They might have been Tuiscon, his son Mannus and

Herman, son of Mannus, according to the genealogy of Tacitus. Menes is held

to be the most ancient king of the Egyptians; 'Theut' was with them a name

for Mercury. At least Theut or Tuiscon, from whom Tacitus derives the

descent of the Germani, and from whom the Teutons, _Tuitsche_ (that is,

Germani) even to-day have their name, is the same as that _Teutates_ who

according to Lucan was worshipped by the Gauls, and whom Caesar took _pro

Dite Patre_, for Pluto, because of the resemblance between his Latin name

and that of _Teut_ or _Thiet_, _Titan_, _Theodon_; this in ancient times

signified men, people, and also an excellent man (like the word 'baron'),

in short, a prince. There are authorities for all these significations: but

one must not delay over this point. Herr Otto Sperling, who is well known

for various learned writings, but has many more in readiness to appear, in

a special dissertation has treated the question of this Teutates, God of

the Celts. Some observations which I imparted to him on that subject have

been published, with his reply, in the _Literary News of the Baltic Sea_.

He interprets this passage from Lucan somewhat otherwise than I do:

_Teutates, pollensque feris altaribus Hesus,_

_Et Tamaris Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae._

Hesus was, it appears, the God of War, who was called Ares by the Greeks

and Erich by the ancient Germani, whence still remains _Erichtag_, Tuesday.

The letters R and S, which are produced by the same organ, are easily

interchanged, for instance: _Moor_ and _Moos_, _Geren_ and _Gesen_, _Er

war_ and _Er was_, _Fer_, _Hierro_, _Eiron_, _Eisen_. Likewise _Papisius_,

_Valesius_, _Fusius_, instead of _Papirius_, _Valerius_, _Furius_, with the

ancient Romans. As for Taramis or perhaps Taranis, one knows that _Taran_

was the thunder, or the God of Thunder, with the ancient Celts, called

_Thor_ by the Germani of the north; whence the English have preserved the

name 'Thursday', _jeudi_, _diem Jovis_. And the passage from Lucan means

that the altar of Taran, God of the Celts, was not less cruel than that of

Diana in Tauris: _Taranis aram non mitiorem ara Dianae Scythicae fuisse_.

143. It is also not impossible that there was a time when the western [213]

or Celtic princes made themselves masters of Greece, of Egypt and a good

part of Asia, and that their cult remained in those countries. When one

considers with what rapidity the Huns, the Saracens and the Tartars gained

possession of a great part of our continent one will be the less surprised

at this; and it is confirmed by the great number of words in the Greek and

German tongues which correspond so closely. Callimachus, in a hymn in

honour of Apollo, seems to imply that the Celts who attacked the Temple at

Delphi, under their Brennus, or chief, were descendants of the ancient

Titans and Giants who made war on Jupiter and the other gods, that is to

say, on the Princes of Asia and of Greece. It may be that Jupiter is

himself descended from the Titans or Theodons, that is, from the earlier

Celto-Scythian princes; and the material collected by the late Abbé de la

Charmoye in his _Celtic Origins_ conforms to that possibility. Yet there

are opinions on other matters in this work by this learned writer which to

me do not appear probable, especially when he excludes the Germani from the

number of the Celts, not having recalled sufficiently the facts given by

ancient writers and not being sufficiently aware of the relation between

the ancient Gallic and Germanic tongues. Now the so-called Giants, who

wished to scale the heavens, were new Celts who followed the path of their

ancestors; and Jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was

constrained to resist them. Just so did the Visigoths established in Gallic

territory resist, together with the Romans, other peoples of Germania and

Scythia, who succeeded them under Attila their leader, he being at that

time in control of the Scythian, Sarmatic and Germanic tribes from the

frontiers of Persia up to the Rhine. But the pleasure one feels when one

thinks to find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history

of fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and I know not whether I

shall have been any more successful than Goropius Becanus, Schrieckius,

Herr Rudbeck and the Abbe de la Charmoye.

144. Let us return to Zoroaster, who led us to Oromasdes and Arimanius, the

sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked upon them as two

eternal principles opposed to each other, although there is reason to doubt

this assumption. It is thought that Marcion, disciple of Cerdon, was of

this opinion before Manes. M. Bayle acknowledges that these men used

lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not sufficiently [214]

recognize their advantages or know how to apply their principal instrument,

which was the difficulty over the origin of evil. He believes that an able

man on their side would have thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it

seems as though he himself, failing any other, wished to undertake a task

so unnecessary in the opinion of many people. 'All the hypotheses' (he

says, _Dictionary_, v., 'Marcion', p. 2039) 'that Christians have

established parry but poorly the blows aimed at them: they all triumph when

they act on the offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they

have to sustain the attack.' He confesses that the 'Dualists' (as with Mr.

Hyde he calls them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon

have been routed by _a priori_ reasons, taken from the nature of God; but

he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the _a

posteriori_ reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil.

145. He treats of the matter with abundant detail in his _Dictionary_,

article 'Manichaeans', p. 2025, which we must examine a little, in order to

throw greater light upon this subject: 'The surest and clearest ideas of

order teach us', he says, 'that a Being who exists through himself, who is

necessary, who is eternal, must be single, infinite, all powerful, and

endowed with all kinds of perfections.' This argument deserves to have been

developed more completely. 'Now it is necessary to see', he goes on, 'if

the phenomena of nature can be conveniently explained by the hypothesis of

one single principle.' I have explained it sufficiently by showing that

there are cases where some disorder in the part is necessary for producing

the greatest order in the whole. But it appears that M. Bayle asks a little

too much: he wishes for a detailed exposition of how evil is connected with

the best possible scheme for the universe. That would be a complete

explanation of the phenomena: but I do not undertake to give it; nor am I

bound to do so, for there is no obligation to do that which is impossible

for us in our existing state. It is sufficient for me to point out that

there is nothing to prevent the connexion of a certain individual evil with

what is the best on the whole. This incomplete explanation, leaving

something to be discovered in the life to come, is sufficient for answering

the objections, though not for a comprehension of the matter.

146. 'The heavens and all the rest of the universe', adds M. Bayle, 'preach

the glory, the power, the oneness of God.' Thence the conclusion [215]

should have been drawn that this is the case (as I have already observed

above) because there is seen in these objects something entire and

isolated, so to speak. Every time we see such a work of God, we find it so

perfect that we must wonder at the contrivance and the beauty thereof: but

when we do not see an entire work, when we only look upon scraps and

fragments, it is no wonder if the good order is not evident there. Our

planetary system composes such an isolated work, which is complete also

when it is taken by itself; each plant, each animal, each man furnishes one

such work, to a certain point of perfection: one recognizes therein the

wonderful contrivance of the author. But the human kind, so far as it is

known to us, is only a fragment, only a small portion of the City of God or

of the republic of Spirits, which has an extent too great for us, and

whereof we know too little, to be able to observe the wonderful order

therein. 'Man alone,' says M. Bayle, 'that masterpiece of his Creator among

things visible, man alone, I say, gives rise to great objections with

regard to the oneness of God.' Claudian made the same observation,

unburdening his heart in these well-known lines:

_Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem_, etc.

But the harmony existing in all the rest allows of a strong presumption

that it would exist also in the government of men, and generally in that of

Spirits, if the whole were known to us. One must judge the works of God as

wisely as Socrates judged those of Heraclitus in these words: What I have

understood thereof pleases me; I think that the rest would please me no

less if I understood it.

147. Here is another particular reason for the disorder apparent in that

which concerns man. It is that God, in giving him intelligence, has

presented him with an image of the Divinity. He leaves him to himself, in a

sense, in his small department, _ut Spartam quam nactus est ornet_. He

enters there only in a secret way, for he supplies being, force, life,

reason, without showing himself. It is there that free will plays its game:

and God makes game (so to speak) of these little Gods that he has thought

good to produce, as we make game of children who follow pursuits which we

secretly encourage or hinder according as it pleases us. Thus man is there

like a little god in his own world or _Microcosm_, which he governs [216]

after his own fashion: he sometimes performs wonders therein, and his art

often imitates nature.

_Jupiter in parvo cum cerneret aethera vitro,_

_Risit et ad Superos talia dicta dedit:_

_Huccine mortalis progressa potentia, Divi?_

_Jam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor._

_Jura poli rerumque fidem legesque Deorum_

_Cuncta Syracusius transtulit arte Senex._

_Quid falso insontem tonitru Salmonea miror?_

_Aemula Naturae est parva reperta manus._

But he also commits great errors, because he abandons himself to the

passions, and because God abandons him to his own way. God punishes him

also for such errors, now like a father or tutor, training or chastising

children, now like a just judge, punishing those who forsake him: and evil

comes to pass most frequently when these intelligences or their small

worlds come into collision. Man finds himself the worse for this, in

proportion to his fault; but God, by a wonderful art, turns all the errors

of these little worlds to the greater adornment of his great world. It is

as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful designs look

like mere confusion until one restores them to the right angle of vision or

one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror. It is by placing and

using them properly that one makes them serve as adornment for a room. Thus

the apparent deformities of our little worlds combine to become beauties in

the great world, and have nothing in them which is opposed to the oneness

of an infinitely perfect universal principle: on the contrary, they

increase our wonder at the wisdom of him who makes evil serve the greater

good.

148. M. Bayle continues: 'that man is wicked and miserable; that there are

everywhere prisons and hospitals; that history is simply a collection of

the crimes and calamities of the human race.' I think that there is

exaggeration in that: there is incomparably more good than evil in the life

of men, as there are incomparably more houses than prisons. With regard to

virtue and vice, a certain mediocrity prevails. Machiavelli has already

observed that there are few very wicked and very good men, and that this

causes the failure of many great enterprises. I find it a great fault in

historians that they keep their mind on the evil more than on the [217]

good. The chief end of history, as also of poetry, should be to teach

prudence and virtue by examples, and then to display vice in such a way as

to create aversion to it and to prompt men to avoid it, or serve towards

that end.

149. M. Bayle avows: 'that one finds everywhere both moral good and

physical good, some examples of virtue, some examples of happiness, and

that this is what makes the difficulty. For if there were only wicked and

unhappy people', he says, 'there would be no need to resort to the

hypothesis of the two principles.' I wonder that this admirable man could

have evinced so great an inclination towards this opinion of the two

principles; and I am surprised at his not having taken into account that

this romance of human life, which makes the universal history of the human

race, lay fully devised in the divine understanding, with innumerable

others, and that the will of God only decreed its existence because this

sequence of events was to be most in keeping with the rest of things, to

bring forth the best result. And these apparent faults in the whole world,

these spots on a Sun whereof ours is but a ray, rather enhance its beauty

than diminish it, contributing towards that end by obtaining a greater

good. There are in truth two principles, but they are both in God, to wit,

his understanding and his will. The understanding furnishes the principle

of evil, without being sullied by it, without being evil; it represents

natures as they exist in the eternal verities; it contains within it the

reason wherefore evil is permitted: but the will tends only towards good.

Let us add a third principle, namely power; it precedes even understanding

and will, but it operates as the one displays it and as the other requires

it.

150. Some (like Campanella) have called these three perfections of God the

three primordialities. Many have even believed that there was therein a

secret connexion with the Holy Trinity: that power relates to the Father,

that is, to the source of Divinity, wisdom to the Eternal Word, which is

called _logos_ by the most sublime of the Evangelists, and will or Love to

the Holy Spirit. Well-nigh all the expressions or comparisons derived from

the nature of the intelligent substance tend that way.

151. It seems to me that if M. Bayle had taken into account what I have

just said of the principles of things, he would have answered his own

questions, or at the least he would not have continued to ask, as he does

in these which follow: 'If man is the work of a single principle [218]

supremely good, supremely holy, supremely powerful, can he be subject to

diseases, to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, pain, grief? Can he have so many

evil tendencies? Can he commit so many crimes? Can supreme goodness produce

an unhappy creature? Shall not supreme power, united to an infinite

goodness, shower blessings upon its work, and shall it not banish all that

might offend or grieve?' Prudentius in his _Hamartigenia_ presented the

same difficulty:

_Si non vult Deus esse malum, cur non vetat? inquit._

_Non refert auctor fuerit, factorve malorum._

_Anne opera in vitium sceleris pulcherrima verti,_

_Cum possit prohibere, sinat; quod si velit omnes_

_Innocuos agere Omnipotens, ne sancta voluntas_

_Degeneret, facto nec se manus inquinet ullo?_

_Condidit ergo malum Dominus, quod spectat ab alto,_

_Et patitur fierique probat, tanquam ipse crearit._

_Ipse creavit enim, quod si discludere possit,_

_Non abolet, longoque sinit grassarier usu._

But I have already answered that sufficiently. Man is himself the source of

his evils: just as he is, he was in the divine idea. God, prompted by

essential reasons of wisdom, decreed that he should pass into existence

just as he is. M. Bayle would perchance have perceived this origin of evil

in the form in which I demonstrate it here, if he had herein combined the

wisdom of God with his power, his goodness and his holiness. I will add, in

passing, that his _holiness_ is nothing other than the highest degree of

goodness, just as the crime which is its opposite is the worst of all evil.

152. M. Bayle places the Greek philosopher Melissus, champion of the

oneness of the first principle (and perhaps even of the oneness of

substance) in conflict with Zoroaster, as with the first originator of

duality. Zoroaster admits that the hypothesis of Melissus is more

consistent with order and _a priori_ reasons, but he denies its conformity

with experience and _a posteriori_ reasons. 'I surpass you', he said, 'in

the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal mark of a good

system.' But, in my opinion, it is not a very good explanation of a

phenomenon to assign to it an _ad hoc_ principle: to evil, a _principium

maleficum_, to cold, a _primum frigidum_; there is nothing so easy and

nothing so dull. It is well-nigh as if someone were to say that the [219]

Peripatetics surpass the new mathematicians in the explanation of the

phenomena of the stars, by giving them _ad hoc_ intelligences to guide

them. According to that, it is quite easy to conceive why the planets make

their way with such precision; whereas there is need of much geometry and

reflexion to understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears

them towards the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them

along, or with their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of

Kepler, which satisfies appearances so well. A man incapable of relishing

deep speculations will at first applaud the Peripatetics and will treat our

mathematicians as dreamers. Some old Galenist will do the same with regard

to the faculties of the Schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a chymific and

a sanguific, and he will assign one of these _ad hoc_ to each operation; he

will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at what he will call the

chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain through mechanical structure

what passes in the body of an animal.

153. The explanation of the cause of evil by a particular principle, _per

principium maleficum_, is of the same nature. Evil needs no such

explanation, any more than do cold and darkness: there is neither _primum

frigidum_ nor principle of darkness. Evil itself comes only from privation;

the positive enters therein only by concomitance, as the active enters by

concomitance into cold. We see that water in freezing is capable of

breaking a gun-barrel wherein it is confined; and yet cold is a certain

privation of force, it only comes from the diminution of a movement which

separates the particles of fluids. When this separating motion becomes

weakened in the water by the cold, the particles of compressed air

concealed in the water collect; and, becoming larger, they become more

capable of acting outwards through their buoyancy. The resistance which the

surfaces of the proportions of air meet in the water, and which opposes the

force exerted by these portions towards dilation, is far less, and

consequently the effect of the air greater, in large air-bubbles than in

small, even though these small bubbles combined should form as great a mass

as the large. For the resistances, that is, the surfaces, increase by the

_square_, and the forces, that is, the contents or the volumes of the

spheres of compressed air, increase by the _cube_, of their diameters. Thus

it is _by accident_ that privation involves action and force. I have

already shown how privation is enough to cause error and malice, and [220]

how God is prompted to permit them, despite that there be no malignity in

him. Evil comes from privation; the positive and action spring from it by

accident, as force springs from cold.

154. The statement that M. Bayle attributes to the Paulicians, p. 2323, is

not conclusive, to wit, that free will must come from two principles, to

the end that it may have power to turn towards good and towards evil: for,

being simple in itself, it should rather have come from a neutral principle

if this argument held good. But free will tends towards good, and if it

meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason that this evil is

concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were. These words which Ovid

ascribes to Medea,

_Video meliora proboque,_

_Deteriora sequor_,

imply that the morally good is mastered by the agreeably good, which makes

more impression on souls when they are disturbed by the passions.

155. Furthermore, M. Bayle himself supplies Melissus with a good answer;

but a little later he disputes it. Here are his words, p. 2025: 'If

Melissus consults the notions of order, he will answer that man was not

wicked when God made him; he will say that man received from God a happy

state, but that not having followed the light of conscience, which in

accordance with the intention of its author should have guided him along

the path of virtue, he has become wicked, and has deserved that God the

supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger. It is

therefore not God who is the cause of moral evil: but he is the cause of

physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil. And this

punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good principle,

of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, I mean its justice,

which is not less essential to it than its goodness. This answer, the most

reasonable that Melissus can give, is fundamentally good and sound, but it

may be disputed by something more specious and more dazzling. For indeed

Zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle ought to have created

man not only without actual evil, but also without the inclination towards

evil; that God, having foreseen sin with all its consequences, ought to

have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled man to moral good, and

not to have allowed him any force for tending towards crime.' That is quite

easy to say, but it is not practicable if one follows the principles [221]

of order: it could not have been accomplished without perpetual miracles.

Ignorance, error and malice follow one another naturally in animals made as

we are: should this species, then, have been missing in the universe? I

have no doubt but that it is too important there, despite all its

weaknesses, for God to have consented to its abolition.

156. M. Bayle, in the article entitled 'Paulicians' inserted by him in his

_Dictionary_, follows up the pronouncements he made in the article on the

Manichaeans. According to him (p. 2330, lit. H) the orthodox seem to admit

two first principles, in making the devil the originator of sin. M. Becker,

a former minister of Amsterdam, author of the book entitled _The World

Bewitched_, has made use of this idea in order to demonstrate that one

should not assign such power and authority to the Devil as would allow of

his comparison with God. Therein he is right: but he pushes the conclusions

too far. And the author of the book entitled [Greek: Apokatastasis Pantôn]

believes that if the Devil had never been vanquished and despoiled, if he

had always kept his prey, if the title of invincible had belonged to him,

that would have done injury to the glory of God. But it is a poor advantage

to keep those whom one has led astray in order to share their punishment

for ever. And as for the cause of evil, it is true that the Devil is the

author of sin. But the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is

in the original imperfection of creatures: that renders them capable of

sinning, and there are circumstances in the sequence of things which cause

this power to evince itself in action.

157. The devils were angels like the rest before their fall, and it is

thought that their leader was one of the chief among angels; but Scripture

is not explicit enough on that point. The passage of the Apocalypse that

speaks of the struggle with the Dragon, as of a vision, leaves much in

doubt, and does not sufficiently develop a subject which by the other

sacred writers is hardly mentioned. It is not in place here to enter into

this discussion, and one must still admit that the common opinion agrees

best with the sacred text. M. Bayle examines some replies of St. Basil, of

Lactantius and others on the origin of evil. As, however, they are

concerned with physical evil, I postpone discussion thereof, and I will

proceed with the examination of the difficulties over the moral cause of

moral evil, which arise in several passages of the works of our gifted

author.

[222]

158. He disputes the _permission_ of this evil, he would wish one to admit

that God _wills_ it. He quotes these words of Calvin (on Genesis, ch. 3):

'The ears of some are offended when one says that God willed it. But I ask

you, what else is the permission of him who is entitled to forbid, or

rather who has the thing in his own hands, but an act of will?' M. Bayle

explains these words of Calvin, and those which precede them, as if he

admitted that God willed the fall of Adam, not in so far as it was a crime,

but under some other conception that is unknown to us. He quotes casuists

who are somewhat lax, who say that a son can desire the death of his

father, not in so far as it is an evil for himself but in so far as it is a

good for his heirs _(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 147, p.

850). It seems to me that Calvin only says that God willed man's fall for

some reason unknown to us. In the main, when it is a question of a decisive

will, that is, of a decree, these distinctions are useless: one wills the

action with all its qualities, if it is true that one wills it. But when it

is a crime, God can only will the permission of it: the crime is neither an

end nor a means, it is only a _conditio sine qua non_; thus it is not the

object of a direct will, as I have already demonstrated above. God cannot

prevent it without acting against what he owes to himself, without doing

something that would be worse than the crime of man, without violating the

rule of the best; and that would be to destroy divinity, as I have already

observed. God is therefore bound by a moral necessity, which is in himself,

to permit moral evil in creatures. There is precisely the case wherein the

will of a wise mind is only permissive. I have already said this: he is

bound to permit the crime of others when he cannot prevent it without

himself failing in that which he owes to himself.

159. 'But among all these infinite combinations', says M. Bayle (p. 853),

'it pleased God to choose one wherein Adam was to sin, and by his decree he

made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should come to

pass.' Very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one applies it

to the combinations which compose the whole universe. 'You will therefore

never make us understand', he adds, 'how God did not will that Eve and Adam

should sin, since he rejected all the combinations wherein they would not

have sinned.' But the thing is in general very easy to understand, from all

that I have just said. This combination that makes the whole universe is

the best; God therefore could not refrain from choosing it without [223]

incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a thing altogether

inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of man which is

involved in this combination.

160. M. Jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion from me,

when for example he says, p. 186 of his treatise on the _Conformity of

Faith with Reason_: 'Those who are puzzled by these difficulties seem to be

too limited in their outlook, and to wish to reduce all God's designs to

their own interests. When God formed the universe, his whole prospect was

himself and his own glory, so that if we had knowledge of all creatures, of

their diverse combinations and of their different relations, we should

understand without difficulty that the universe corresponds perfectly to

the infinite wisdom of the Almighty.' He says elsewhere (p. 232):

'Supposing the impossible, that God could not prevent the wrong use of free

will without destroying it, it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his

glory determined him to form free creatures this powerful reason must have

prevailed over the grievous consequences which their freedom might have.' I

have endeavoured to develop this still further through _the reason of the

best and the moral necessity_ which led God to make this choice, despite

the sin of some creatures which is involved therein. I think that I have

cut down to the root of the difficulty; nevertheless I am well pleased, for

the sake of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of

solution to the peculiar difficulties of M. Bayle.

161. Here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. 148, p. 856): 'Would it in

a prince be a mark of his kindness: 1. To give to a hundred messengers as

much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred leagues? 2. To promise

a recompense to all those who should finish the journey without having

borrowed anything, and to threaten with imprisonment all those whom their

money should not have sufficed? 3. To make choice of a hundred persons, of

whom he would know for certain that there were but two who should earn the

recompense, the ninety-eight others being destined to find on the way

either a mistress or a gamester or some other thing which would make them

incur expenses, and which he would himself have been at pains to dispose in

certain places along their path? 4. To imprison actually ninety-eight of

these messengers on the moment of their return? Is it not abundantly

evident that he would have no kindness for them, and that on the contrary

he would intend for them, not the proposed recompense, but prison? [224]

They would deserve it, certainly; but he who had wished them to deserve it

and placed them in the sure way towards deserving it, should he be worthy

of being called kind, on the pretext that he had recompensed the two

others?' It would doubtless not be on that account that he earned the title

of 'kind'. Yet other circumstances may contribute, which would avail to

render him worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to

know those people, and to make trial of them; just as Gideon made use of

some extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least

squeamish among his soldiers. And even if the prince were to know already

the disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test

in order to make them known also to the others? Even though these reasons

be not applicable to God, they make it clear, nevertheless, that an action

like that of this prince may appear preposterous when it is detached from

the circumstances indicating its cause. All the more must one deem that God

has acted well, and that we should see this if we fully knew of all that he

has done.

162. M. Descartes, in a letter to the Princess Elizabeth (vol. 1, letter

10) has made use of another comparison to reconcile human freedom with the

omnipotence of God. 'He imagines a monarch who has forbidden duels, and

who, knowing for certain that two noblemen, if they meet, will fight, takes

sure steps to bring about their meeting. They meet indeed, they fight:

their disobedience of the law is an effect of their free will, they are

punishable. What a king can do in such a case (he adds) concerning some

free actions of his subjects, God, who has infinite foreknowledge and

power, certainly does concerning all those of men. Before he sent us into

this world he knew exactly what all the tendencies of our will would be: he

has endued us therewith, he also has disposed all other things that are

outside us, to cause such and such objects to present themselves to our

senses at such and such a time. He knew that as a result of this our free

will would determine us toward some particular thing, and he has willed it

thus; but he has not for that willed to constrain our free will thereto. In

this king one may distinguish two different degrees of will, the one

whereby he willed that these noblemen should fight, since he brought about

their meeting, and the other whereby he did not will it, since he forbade

duels. Even so theologians distinguish in God an absolute and independent

will, whereby he wills that all things be done just as they are done, [225]

and another which is relative, and which concerns the merit or demerit of

men, whereby he wills that his Laws be obeyed' (Descartes, letter 10 of

vol. 1, pp. 51, 52. Compare with that the quotation made by M. Arnauld,

vol. 2, p. 288 _et seqq_. of his _Reflexions on the System of Malebranche_,

from Thomas Aquinas, on the antecedent and consequent will of God).

163. Here is M. Bayle's reply to that (_Reply to the Questions of a

Provincial_, ch. 154, p. 943): 'This great philosopher is much mistaken, it

seems to me. There would not be in this monarch any degree of will, either

small or great, that these two noblemen should obey the law, and not fight.

He would will entirely and solely that they should fight. That would not

exculpate them, they would only follow their passion, they would be unaware

that they conformed to the will of their sovereign: but he would be in

truth the moral cause of their encounter, and he would not more entirely

wish it supposing he were to inspire them with the desire or to give them

the order for it. Imagine to yourself two princes each of whom wishes his

eldest son to poison himself. One employs constraint, the other contents

himself with secretly causing a grief that he knows will be sufficient to

induce his son to poison himself. Will you be doubtful whether the will of

the latter is less complete than the will of the former? M. Descartes is

therefore assuming an unreal fact and does not at all solve the

difficulty.'

164. One must confess that M. Descartes speaks somewhat crudely of the will

of God in regard to evil in saying not only that God knew that our free

will would determine us toward some particular thing, but also _that he

also wished it_, albeit he did not will to constrain the will thereto. He

speaks no less harshly in the eighth letter of the same volume, saying that

not the slightest thought enters into the mind of a man which God does not

_will_, and has not willed from all eternity, to enter there. Calvin never

said anything harsher; and all that can only be excused if it is to be

understood of a permissive will. M. Descartes' solution amounts to the

distinction between the will expressed in the sign and the will expressive

of the good pleasure (_inter voluntatem signi et beneplaciti_) which the

moderns have taken from the Schoolmen as regards the terms, but to which

they have given a meaning not usual among the ancients. It is true that God

may command something and yet not will that it be done, as when he

commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son: he willed the obedience, and he did

not will the action. But when God commands the virtuous action and [226]

forbids the sin, he wills indeed that which he ordains, but it is only by

an antecedent will, as I have explained more than once.

165. M. Descartes' comparison is therefore not satisfactory; but it may be

made so. One must make some change in the facts, inventing some reason to

oblige the prince to cause or permit the two enemies to meet. They must,

for instance, be together in the army or in other obligatory functions, a

circumstance the prince himself cannot hinder without endangering his

State. For example, the absence of either of them might be responsible for

the disappearance of innumerable persons of his party from the army or

cause grumbling among the soldiers and give rise to some great disturbance.

In this case, therefore, one may say that the prince does not will the

duel: he knows of it, but he permits it notwithstanding, for he prefers

permitting the sin of others to committing one himself. Thus this corrected

comparison may serve, provided that one observe the difference between God

and the prince. The prince is forced into this permission by his

powerlessness; a more powerful monarch would have no need of all these

considerations; but God, who has power to do all that is possible, only

permits sin because it is absolutely impossible to anyone at all to do

better. The prince's action is peradventure not free from sorrow and

regret. This regret is due to his imperfection, of which he is sensible;

therein lies displeasure. God is incapable of such a feeling and finds,

moreover, no cause therefor; he is infinitely conscious of his own

perfection, and it may even be said that the imperfection in creatures

taken individually changes for him into perfection in relation to the

whole, and that it is an added glory for the Creator. What more can one

wish, when one possesses a boundless wisdom and when one is as powerful as

one is wise; when one can do all and when one has the best?