d, 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