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_February_ 1712

I said in my essays, 392, that I wished to see the demonstrations mentioned
by M. Bayle and contained in the sixth letter printed at Trevoux in 1703.
Father des Bosses has shown me this letter, in which the writer essays to
demonstrate by the geometrical method that God is the sole true cause of
all that is real. My perusal of it has confirmed me in the opinion which I
indicated in the same passage, namely, that this proposition can be true in
a very good sense, God being the only cause of pure and absolute realities,
or perfections; but when one includes limitations or privations under the
name of realities one can say that second causes co-operate in the
production of what is limited, and that otherwise God would be the cause of
sin, and even its sole cause. And I am somewhat inclined to think that the
gifted author of the letter does not greatly differ in opinion from me,
although he seems to include all modalities among the realities of which he
declares God to be the sole cause. For in actual fact I think he will not
admit that God is the cause and the author of sin. Indeed, he explains
himself in a manner which seems to overthrow his thesis and to grant real
action to creatures. For in the proof of the eighth corollary of his second
proposition these words occur: 'The natural motion of the soul, although
determinate in itself, is indeterminate in respect of its objects. For it
is love of good in general. It is through the ideas of good appearing [390]
in individual objects that this motion becomes individual and determinate
in relation to those objects. And thus as the mind has the power of varying
its own ideas it can also change the determinations of its love. And for
that purpose it is not necessary that it overcome the power of God or
oppose his action. These determinations of motion towards individual
objects are not invincible. It is this noninvincibility which causes the
mind to be free and capable of changing them; but after all the mind makes
these changes only through the motion which God gives to it and conserves
for it.' In my own style I would have said that the perfection which is in
the action of the creature comes from God, but that the limitations to be
found there are a consequence of the original limitation and the preceding
limitations that occurred in the creature. Further, this is so not only in
minds but also in all other substances, which thereby are causes
co-