s
easy in respect of some ancient authors whose works are lost. Kepler, one
of the most excellent of modern mathematicians, recognized a species of
imperfection in matter, even when there is no irregular motion: he calls it
its 'natural inertia', which gives it a resistance to motion, whereby a
greater mass receives less speed from one and the same force. There is
soundness in this observation, and I have used it to advantage in this
work, in order to have a comparison such as should illustrate how the
original imperfection of the creatures sets bounds to the action of the
Creator, which tends towards good. But as matter is itself of God's
creation, it only furnishes a comparison and an example, and cannot be the
very source of evil and of imperfection. I have already shown that this
source lies in the forms or ideas of the possibles, for it must be eternal,
and matter is not so. Now since God made all positive reality that is not
eternal, he would have made the source of evil, if that did not rather lie
in the possibility of things or forms, that which alone God did not make,
since he is not the author of his own understanding.

381. Yet even though the source of evil lies in the possible forms,
anterior to the acts of God's will, it is nevertheless true that God
co-operates in evil in the actual performance of introducing these forms
into matter: and this is what causes the difficulty in question here.
Durand de Saint-Pourcain, Cardinal Aureolus, Nicolas Taurel, Father Louis
de Dole, M. Bernier and some others, speaking of this co-operation, would
have it only general, for fear of impairing the freedom of man and the
holiness of God. They seem to maintain that God, having given to creatures
the power to act, contents himself with conserving this power. On the [354]
other hand, M. Bayle, according to some modern writers, carries the
cooperation of God too far: he seems to fear lest the creature be not
sufficiently dependent upon God. He goes so far as to deny action to
creatures; he does not even acknowledge any real distinction between
accident and substance.

382. He places great reliance especially on that doctrine accepted of the
Schoolmen, that conservation is a continued creation. The conclusion to be
drawn from this doctrine would seem to be that the creature never exists,
that it is ever newborn and ever dying, like time, movement and other
transient beings. Plato believed this of material and tangible things,