have conceived of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. I have
observed that these opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused
notions which had been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny;
and I have taken up my pen more than once on such an occasion to give
explanations on these important matters. But finally I have been compelled
to gather up my thoughts on all these connected questions, and to impart
them to the public. It is this that I have undertaken in the Essays which I
offer here, on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of
Evil.

There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray:
one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary, above all in
the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists in the discussion
of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements
thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. The
first perplexes almost all the human race, the other exercises philosophers
only. I shall have perchance at another time an opportunity to declare
myself on the second, and to point out that, for lack of a true conception
of the nature of substance and matter, people have taken up false positions
leading to insurmountable difficulties, difficulties which should properly
be applied to the overthrow of these very positions. But if the [54]
knowledge of continuity is important for speculative enquiry, that of
necessity is none the less so for practical application; and it, together
with the questions therewith connected, to wit, the freedom of man and the
justice of God, forms the object of this treatise.

Men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the
ancients called the 'Lazy Reason', because it tended towards doing nothing,
or at least towards being careful for nothing and only following
inclination for the pleasure of the moment. For, they said, if the future
is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever I may do. Now
the future (so they said) is necessary, whether because the Divinity
foresees everything, and even pre-establishes it by the control of all
things in the universe; or because everything happens of necessity, through
the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature of truth,
which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on future events,
as it is in all assertions, since the assertion must always