d choice.'

353. I agree with M. Bayle that God could have so ordered bodies and [337]
souls on this globe of earth, whether by ways of nature or by extraordinary
graces, that it would have been a perpetual paradise and a foretaste of the
celestial state of the blessed. There is no reason why there should not be
worlds happier than ours; but God had good reasons for willing that ours
should be such as it is. Nevertheless, in order to prove that a better
state would have been possible here, M. Bayle had no need to resort to the
system of occasional causes: it abounds in miracles and in hypotheses for
which their very originators confess there is no justification; and these
are two defects such as will most of all estrange a system from true
philosophy. It is a cause for surprise, in the first place, that M. Bayle
did not bethink himself of the System of Pre-established Harmony which he
had examined before, and which for this matter was so opportune. But as in
this system all is connected and harmonious, all following from reasons and
nothing being left incomplete or exposed to the rash discretion of perfect
indifference, it seems that it was not pleasing to M. Bayle: for he was
here somewhat biassed in favour of such indifference, which,
notwithstanding, he contested so strongly on other occasions. He was much
given to passing from one extreme to the other, not with an ill intention
or against his own conviction, but because there was as yet nothing settled
in his mind on the question concerned. He contented himself with whatever
suited him for frustrating the opponent he had in mind, his aim being only
to perplex philosophers, and show the weakness of our reason; and never, in
my opinion, did either Arcesilaus or Carneades argue for and against with
more eloquence and more wit. But, after all, one must not doubt for the
sake of doubting: doubts must serve us as a gangway to the truth. That is
what I often said to the late Abbe Foucher, a few specimens of whose work
prove that he designed to do with regard to the Academicians what Lipsius
and Scioppius had done for the Stoics, and M. Gassendi for Epicurus, and
what M. Dacier has so well begun for Plato. It must not be possible for us
to offer true philosophers such a reproach as that implied in the
celebrated Casaubon's answer to those who, in showing him the hall of the
Sorbonne, told him that debate had been carried on there for some
centuries. What conclusions have bee