184.  The late Jacob Thomasius, a celebrated Professor at Leipzig, made the apt observation in his elucidations of the philosophic rules of Daniel Stahl, a Jena professor, that it is not advisable to go altogether beyond God, and that one must not say, with some Scotists, that the eternal verities would exist even though there were no understanding, not even that of God.  For it is, in my judgement, the divine understanding which gives reality to the eternal verities, albeit God’s will have no part therein.  All reality must be founded on something existent.  It is true that an atheist may be a geometrician:  but if there were no God, geometry would have no object.  And without God, not only would there be nothing existent, but there would be nothing possible.  That, however, does not hinder those who do not see the connexion of all things one with another and with God from being able to understand certain sciences, without knowing their first source, which is in God.  Aristotle, although he also scarcely knew that source, nevertheless said something of the same kind which was very apposite.  He acknowledged that the principles of individual forms of knowledge depend on a superior knowledge which gives the reason for them; and this superior knowledge must have being, and consequently God, the[244] source of being, for its object.  Herr Dreier of Koenigsberg has aptly observed that the true metaphysics which Aristotle sought, and which he called [Greek:  ten zetoumenen], his desideratum, was theology.

185.  Yet the same M. Bayle, who says so much that is admirable in order to prove that the rules of goodness and justice, and the eternal verities in general, exist by their nature, and not by an arbitrary choice of God, has spoken very hesitatingly about them in another passage (Continuation of Divers Thoughts on the Comet, vol.  II, ch. 114, towards the end).  After having given an account of the opinion of M. Descartes and a section of his followers, who maintain that God is the free cause of truths and of essences, he adds (p. 554):  ’I have done all that I could to gain true understanding of this dogma and to find the solution of the difficulties surrounding it.  I confess to you quite simply that I still cannot properly fathom it.  That does not discourage me; I suppose, as other philosophers in other cases have supposed, that time will unfold the meaning of this noble paradox.  I wish that Father Malebranche had thought fit to defend it, but he took other measures.’  Is it possible that the enjoyment of doubt can have such influence upon a gifted man as to make him wish and hope for the power to believe that two contradictories never exist together for the sole reason that God forbade them to, and, moreover, that God could have issued them an order to ensure that they always walked together?  There is indeed a noble paradox!  Father Malebranche showed great wisdom in taking other measures.