l this examination
has been made. I would venture to say no, for otherwise one would never
attain to certainty and our conclusion would be always provisional. I
believe that able geometricians will scarce be troubled by the objections
of Joseph Scaliger against Archimedes, or by those of Mr. Hobbes [90]
against Euclid; but that is because they have fully understood and are sure
of the proofs. Nevertheless it is sometimes well to show oneself ready to
examine certain objections. On the one hand it may serve to rescue people
from their error, while on the other we ourselves may profit by it; for
specious fallacies often contain some useful solution and bring about the
removal of considerable difficulties. That is why I have always liked
ingenious objections made against my own opinions, and I have never
examined them without profit: witness those which M. Bayle formerly made
against my System of Pre-established Harmony, not to mention those which M.
Arnauld, M. l'Abbe Foucher and Father Lami, O.S.B., made to me on the same
subject. But to return to the principal question, I conclude from reasons I
have just set forth that when an objection is put forward against some
truth, it is always possible to answer it satisfactorily.

27. It may be also that M. Bayle does not mean 'insoluble objections' in
the sense that I have just explained. I observe that he varies, at least in
his expressions: for in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc he does not
admit that one can bring demonstrations against the truths of faith. It
appears therefore that he takes the objections to be insoluble only in
respect of our present degree of enlightenment; and in this Reply, p. 35,
he even does not despair of the possibility that one day a solution
hitherto unknown may be found by someone. Concerning that more will be said
later. I hold an opinion, however, that will perchance cause surprise,
namely that this solution has been discovered entire, and is not even
particularly difficult. Indeed a mediocre intelligence capable of
sufficient care, and using correctly the rules of common logic, is in a
position to answer the most embarrassing objection made against truth, when
the objection is only taken from reason, and when it is claimed to be a
'demonstration'. Whatever scorn the generality of moderns have to-day for
the logic of Aristotle, one must acknowledge that it teaches infallible
ways of resisting error in these conjunctures. For one has on