h applause amongst them, and if even most worthy men
have been imbued therewith. Our author, who is otherwise rid of many of the
errors of the ordinary Schoolmen, is still deluded by this fiction: but he
is without doubt one of the most skilful of those who have supported it.

_Si Pergama dextra_
_Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent._

He gives it the best possible turn, and only shows it on its good side. He
knows how to strip spontaneity and reason of their advantages, [408]
transferring all these to vague indifference: only through this
indifference is one active, resisting the passions, taking pleasure in
one's choice, or being happy; it appears indeed that one would be miserable
if some happy necessity should oblige us to choose aright. Our author had
said admirable things on the origin and reasons of natural evils: he only
had to apply the same principles to moral evil; indeed, he believes himself
that moral evil becomes an evil through the physical evils that it causes
or tends to cause. But somehow or other he thinks that it would be a
degradation of God and men if they were to be made subject to reason; that
thus they would all be rendered passive to it and would no longer be
satisfied with themselves; in short that men would have nothing wherewith
to oppose the misfortunes that come to them from without, if they had not
within them this admirable privilege of rendering things good or tolerable
by choosing them, and of changing all into gold by the touch of this
wondrous faculty.

4. We will examine it in closer detail presently; but it will be well to
profit beforehand by the excellent ideas of our author on the nature of
things and on natural evils, particularly since there are some points in
which we shall be able to go a little further: by this means also we shall
gain a better understanding of the whole arrangement of his system. The
first chapter contains the principles. The writer calls substance a being
the idea of which does not involve the existence of another. I do not know
if there are any such among created beings, by reason of the connexion
existing between all things; and the example of a wax torch is not the
example of a substance, any more than that of a swarm of bees would be. But
one may take the terms in an extended sense. He observes aptly that after
all the changes of matter and after all the qualities of which it may be
divested, there remain extension, mob