But the final and decisive will results from consideration of all the goods and all the evils that enter into our deliberation, it results from a total combination.  This shows[190] that a mediate will, although it may in a sense pass as consequent in relation to a pure and primitive antecedent will, must be considered antecedent in relation to the final and decretory will.  God gives reason to the human race; misfortunes arise thence by concomitance.  His pure antecedent will tends towards giving reason, as a great good, and preventing the evils in question.  But when it is a question of the evils that accompany this gift which God has made to us of reason, the compound, made up of the combination of reason and of these evils, will be the object of a mediate will of God, which will tend towards producing or preventing this compound, according as the good or the evil prevails therein.  But even though it should prove that reason did more harm than good to men (which, however, I do not admit), whereupon the mediate will of God would discard it with all its concomitants, it might still be the case that it was more in accordance with the perfection of the universe to give reason to men, notwithstanding all the evil consequences which it might have with reference to them.  Consequently, the final will or the decree of God, resulting from all the considerations he can have, would be to give it to them.  And, far from being subject to blame for this, he would be blameworthy if he did not so.  Thus the evil, or the mixture of goods and evils wherein the evil prevails, happens only by concomitance, because it is connected with greater goods that are outside this mixture.  This mixture, therefore, or this compound, is not to be conceived as a grace or as a gift from God to us; but the good that is found mingled therein will nevertheless be good.  Such is God’s gift of reason to those who make ill use thereof.  It is always a good in itself; but the combination of this good with the evils that proceed from its abuse is not a good with regard to those who in consequence thereof become unhappy.  Yet it comes to be by concomitance, because it serves a greater good in relation to the universe.  And it is doubtless that which prompted God to give reason to those who have made it an instrument of their unhappiness.  Or, to put it more precisely, in accordance with my system God, having found among the possible beings some rational creatures who misuse their reason, gave existence to those who are included in the best possible plan of the universe.  Thus nothing prevents us from admitting that God grants goods which turn into evil by the fault of men, this often happening to men in just punishment of the misuse they had made of God’s grace.  Aloysius [191] Novarinus wrote a book De Occultis Dei Beneficiis:  one could write one De Occultis Dei Poenis.  This saying of Claudian would be in place here with regard to some persons: