st conclude
that God does all, and that in all creation there are no first or second or
even occasional causes, as can be easily proved. At this moment when I
speak, I am such as I am, with all my circumstances, with such thought,
such action, whether I sit or stand, that if God creates me in this moment
such as I am, as one must of necessity say in this system, he creates me
with such thought, such action, such movement and such determination. One
cannot say that God creates me in the first place, and that once I am
created he produces with me my movements and my determinations. That is
indefensible for two reasons. The first is, that when God creates me or
conserves me at this instant, he does not conserve me as a being without
form, like a species, or another of the Universals of Logic. I am an
individual; he creates me and conserves me as such, and as being all that I
am in this instant, with all my attendant circumstances. The second reason
is that if God creates me in this instant, and one says that afterwards he
produces with me my actions, it will be necessary to imagine another
instant for action: for before acting one must exist. Now that would be two
instants where we only assume one. It is therefore certain in this
hypothesis that creatures have neither more connexion nor more relation
with their actions than they had with their production at the first moment
of the first creation.' The author of this _Reflexion_ draws thence very
harsh conclusions which one can picture to oneself; and he testifies at the
end that one would be deeply indebted to any man that should teach those
who approve this system how to extricate themselves from these frightful
absurdities.

387. M. Bayle carries this still further. 'You know', he says (p. 775),
'that it is demonstrated in the Scholastic writings' (he cites Arriaga,
_Disp_. 9, Phys., sect. 6 et praesertim, sub-sect. 3) 'that the creature
cannot be either the total cause or the partial cause of its conservation:
for if it were, it would exist before existing, which is [357]
contradictory. You know that the argument proceeds like this: that which
conserves itself acts; now that which acts exists, and nothing can act
before it has attained complete existence; therefore, if a creature
conserved itself, it would act before being. This argument is not founded
upon probabilities, but upon the first principles of Metaphysics, _non
entis nulla sunt accidentia, operari