'Considering only', he says, 'the power of God and the nature of
man by themselves, it is very easy to conceive that God could have made man
more perfect: but if one will consider man, not in himself and separately
from all other creatures, but as a member of the universe and a portion
which is subject to the general laws of motions, one will be bound to
acknowledge that man is as perfect as he could have been.' He adds 'that we
cannot conceive that God could have employed any other means more
appropriate than pain for the conservation of our bodies'. M. Regis is
right in a general way in saying that God cannot do better than he has done
in relation to all. And although there be apparently in some places in the
universe rational animals more perfect than man, one may say that God was
right to create every kind of species, some more perfect than others. It is
perhaps not impossible that there be somewhere a species of animals much
resembling man and more perfect than we are. It may be even that the human
race will attain in time to a greater perfection than that which we can now
envisage. Thus the laws of motions do not prevent man from being more
perfect: but the place God has assigned to man in space and in time limits
the perfections he was able to receive.

342. I also doubt, with M. Bayle, whether pain be necessary in order to
warn men of peril. But this writer goes too far (_Reply to the Questions of
a Provincial_, vol. II, ch. 77, p. 104): he seems to think that a feeling
of pleasure could have the same effect, and that, in order to prevent a
child from going too near the fire, God could give him ideas of pleasure in
proportion to the distance he kept from it. This expedient does not appear
very practicable with regard to all evils, unless a miracle were involved.
It is more natural that what if it were too near would cause an evil should
cause some foreboding of evil when it is a little less near. Yet I admit
that it is possible such a foreboding will be something less than pain, and
usually this is the case. Thus it indeed appears that pain is not necessary
for causing one to shun present peril; it is wont rather to serve as a
penalty for having actually plunged into evil, and a warning against [331]
further lapse. There are also many painful evils the avoidance whereof
rests not with us. As a dissolution of the continuity of our body is a
consequence of many accidents that may happen to us, it was natural that