this imperfection of the body should be represented by some sense of
imperfection in the soul. Nevertheless I would not guarantee that there
were no animals in the universe whose structure was cunning enough to cause
a sense of indifference as accompaniment to this dissolution of continuity,
as for instance when a gangrenous limb is cut off; or even a sense of
pleasure, as if one were only scratching oneself. For the imperfection that
attends the dissolution of the body might lead to the sense of a greater
perfection, which was suspended or checked by the continuity which is now
broken: and in this respect the body would be as it were a prison.

343. There is also nothing to preclude the existence in the universe of
animals resembling that one which Cyrano de Bergerac encountered in the
sun. The body of this animal being a sort of fluid composed of innumerable
small animals, that were capable of ranging themselves in accordance with
the desires of the great animal, by this means it transformed itself in a
moment, just as it pleased; and the dissolution of continuity caused it no
more hurt than the stroke of an oar can cause to the sea. But, after all,
these animals are not men, they are not in our globe or in our present
century; and God's plan ensured that there should not be lacking here on
earth a rational animal clothed in flesh and bones, whose structure
involves susceptibility to pain.

344. But M. Bayle further opposes this on another principle, one which I
have already mentioned. It seems that he thinks the ideas which the soul
conceives in relation to the feelings of the body are arbitrary. Thus God
might have caused the dissolution of continuity to give us pleasure. He
even maintains that the laws of motion are entirely arbitrary. 'I would
wish to know', he says (vol. III, ch. 166, p. 1080), 'whether God
established by an act of his freedom of indifference general laws on the
communication of movements, and the particular laws on the union of the
human soul with an organic body? In this case, he could have established
quite different laws, and adopted a system whose results involved neither
moral evil nor physical evil. But if the answer is given that God was
constrained by supreme wisdom to establish the laws that he has
established, there we have neither more nor less than the _Fatum_ of [332]
the Stoics. Wisdom will have marked out a way for God, the abandonment
whereof will have been as impossible to him a