e, or that they
were necessary, not only to the well-being and completeness of the
universe, but also to the felicity, perfection and conservation of God, who
directs it. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius gave expression to that in the
eighth chapter of the fifth book of his _Meditations_. 'Duplici ratione',
he says, 'diligas oportet, quidquid evenerit tibi; altera quod tibi natum
et tibi coordinatum et ad te quodammodo affectum est; altera quod universi
gubernatori prosperitatis et consummationis atque adeo permansionis ipsius
procurandae ([Greek: tes euodias kai tes synteleias kai tes symmones
autes]) ex parte causa est.' This precept is not the most reasonable of
those stated by that great emperor. A _diligas oportet_ ([Greek: stergein
chre]) is of no avail; a thing does not become pleasing just because it is
necessary, and because it is destined for or attached to someone: and what
for me would be an evil would not cease to be such because it would be my
master's good, unless this good reflected back on me. One good thing among
others in the universe is that the general good becomes in reality the
individual good of those who love the Author of all good. But the principal
error of this emperor and of the Stoics was their assumption that the good
of the universe must please God himself, because they imagined God as the
soul of the world. This error has nothing in common with my dogma, [264]
according to which God is _Intelligentia extramundana_, as Martianus
Capella calls him, or rather _supramundana_. Further, he acts to do good,
and not to receive it. _Melius est dare quam accipere_; his bliss is ever
perfect and can receive no increase, either from within or from without.

218. I come now to the principal objection M. Bayle, after M. Arnauld,
brings up against me. It is complicated: they maintain that God would be
under compulsion, that he would act of necessity, if he were bound to
create the best; or at least that he would have been lacking in power if he
could not have found a better expedient for excluding sins and other evils.
That is in effect denying that this universe is the best, and that God is
bound to insist upon the best. I have met this objection adequately in more
than one passage: I have proved that God cannot fail to produce the best;
and from that assumption it follows that the evils we experience could not
have been reasonably excluded from the universe, since they are there. Let
us see, however, wha