cause. [203] For where I am concerned it would no longer be a free cause.  I should be catching it at the moment when I knew it to be necessitated by its own choice.  It is impossible for a being to be free or indifferent with regard to that to which it is already determined, and at the time when it is determined thereto.  All that which exists exists of necessity while it exists. [Greek:  To einai to on hotan ei, kai to me einai hotan me ei, ananke.] “Necesse est id quod est, quando est, esse; et id quod non est, quando non est, non esse”:  Arist., De Interpret., cap. 9.  The Nominalists have adopted this maxim of Aristotle.  Scotus and sundry other Schoolmen appear to reject it, but fundamentally their distinctions come to the same thing.  See the Jesuits of Coimbra on this passage from Aristotle, p. 380 et seq.)’

This maxim may pass also; I would wish only to change something in the phraseology.  I would not take ‘free’ and ‘indifferent’ for one and the same thing, and would not place ‘free’ and ‘determined’ in antithesis.  One is never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise; one is always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side than on another:  but one is never necessitated to the choice that one makes.  I mean here a necessity absolute and metaphysical; for it must be admitted that God, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a moral necessity.  It must be admitted also that one is necessitated to the choice by a hypothetical necessity, when one actually makes the choice; and even before one is necessitated thereto by the very truth of the futurition, since one will do it.  These hypothetical necessities do no harm.  I have spoken sufficiently on this point already.

133.  XVIII.  ’When a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion, it is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to kill all the rest, not excepting even babes and sucklings.’

It seems to be assumed here that there are a hundred thousand times more damned than saved, and that children dying unbaptized are included among the former.  Both these points are disputed, and especially the damnation of these children.  I have spoken of this above.  M. Bayle urges the same objection elsewhere (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, ch. 178, p. 1223):  ‘We see clearly’, he says, ’that the Sovereign who wishes to exercise both justice and clemency when a city has revolted must be content with the punishment of a small number of mutineers, and [204] pardon all the rest.  For if the number of those who are chastised is as a thousand to one, in comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel.  He would assuredly be accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration, and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to