law. Others have said that even supposing all rational
beings in existence were to perish, true propositions would remain true.
Cajetan maintained that if he remained alone in the universe, all other
things without any exception having been destroyed, the knowledge that he
had of the nature of a rose would nevertheless subsist.'

184. The late Jacob Thomasius, a celebrated Professor at Leipzig, made the
apt observation in his elucidations of the philosophic rules of Daniel
Stahl, a Jena professor, that it is not advisable to go altogether beyond
God, and that one must not say, with some Scotists, that the eternal
verities would exist even though there were no understanding, not even that
of God. For it is, in my judgement, the divine understanding which gives
reality to the eternal verities, albeit God's will have no part therein.
All reality must be founded on something existent. It is true that an
atheist may be a geometrician: but if there were no God, geometry would
have no object. And without God, not only would there be nothing existent,
but there would be nothing possible. That, however, does not hinder those
who do not see the connexion of all things one with another and with God
from being able to understand certain sciences, without knowing their first
source, which is in God. Aristotle, although he also scarcely knew that
source, nevertheless said something of the same kind which was very
apposite. He acknowledged that the principles of individual forms of
knowledge depend on a superior knowledge which gives the reason for them;
and this superior knowledge must have being, and consequently God, the[244]
source of being, for its object. Herr Dreier of Koenigsberg has aptly
observed that the true metaphysics which Aristotle sought, and which he
called [Greek: ten zetoumenen], his _desideratum_, was theology.

185. Yet the same M. Bayle, who says so much that is admirable in order to
prove that the rules of goodness and justice, and the eternal verities in
general, exist by their nature, and not by an arbitrary choice of God, has
spoken very hesitatingly about them in another passage (Continuation of
_Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, vol. II, ch. 114, towards the end). After
having given an account of the opinion of M. Descartes and a section of his
followers, who maintain that God is the free cause of truths and of
essences, he adds (p. 554): 'I have done all that I could to gain true
understanding of this dogma a