here on earth, also willed that animals should have a great tenderness
for their little ones, even to the point of endangering themselves for
their preservation. From pain and from sensual pleasure spring fear,
cupidity and the other passions that are ordinarily serviceable, although
it may accidentally happen that they sometimes turn towards ill: one must
say as much of poisons, epidemic diseases and other hurtful things, namely
that these are indispensable consequences of a well-conceived system. As
for ignorance and errors, it must be taken into account that the most
perfect creatures are doubtless ignorant of much, and that knowledge is
wont to be proportionate to needs. Nevertheless it is necessary that one be
exposed to hazards which cannot be foreseen, and accidents of such kinds
are inevitable. One must often be mistaken in one's judgement, because it
is not always permitted to suspend it long enough for exact [415]
consideration. These disadvantages are inseparable from the system of
things: for things must very often resemble one another in a certain
situation, the one being taken for the other. But the inevitable errors are
not the most usual, nor the most pernicious. Those which cause us the most
harm are wont to arise through our fault; and consequently one would be
wrong to make natural evils a pretext for taking one's own life, since one
finds that those who have done so have generally been prompted to such
action by voluntary evils.

11. After all, one finds that all these evils of which we have spoken come
accidentally from good causes; and there is reason to infer concerning all
we do not know, from all we do know, that one could not have done away with
them without falling into greater troubles. For the better understanding of
this the author counsels us to picture the world as a great building. There
must be not only apartments, halls, galleries, gardens, grottoes, but also
the kitchen, the cellar, the poultry-yard, stables, drainage. Thus it would
not have been proper to make only suns in the world, or to make an earth
all of gold and of diamonds, but not habitable. If man had been all eye or
all ear, he would not have been fitted for feeding himself. If God had made
him without passions, he would have made him stupid; and if he had wished
to make man free from error he would have had to deprive him of senses, or
give him powers of sensation through some other means than organs, that is
to