in bodies, to make them respond in accordance with their own laws to the thoughts and the wills of souls.  But it ought to have been taken into account that this non-intelligent cause, which produces such beautiful things in the grains and seeds of plants and animals, and effects the actions of bodies as the will ordains them, was formed by the hand of God:  and God is infinitely more skilful than a watchmaker, who himself makes machines and automata that are [246] capable of producing as wonderful effects as if they possessed intelligence.

189.  Now to come to M. Bayle’s apprehensions concerning the Stratonists, in case one should admit truths that are not dependent upon the will of God:  he seems to fear lest they may take advantage against us of the perfect regularity of the eternal verities.  Since this regularity springs only from the nature and necessity of things, without being directed by any cognition, M. Bayle fears that one might with Strato thence infer that the world also could have become regular through a blind necessity.  But it is easy to answer that.  In the region of the eternal verities are found all the possibles, and consequently the regular as well as the irregular:  there must be a reason accounting for the preference for order and regularity, and this reason can only be found in understanding.  Moreover these very truths can have no existence without an understanding to take cognizance of them; for they would not exist if there were no divine understanding wherein they are realized, so to speak.  Hence Strato does not attain his end, which is to exclude cognition from that which enters into the origin of things.

190.  The difficulty that M. Bayle has imagined in connexion with Strato seems a little too subtle and far-fetched.  That is termed:  timere, ubi non est timor.  He makes another difficulty, which has just as slight a foundation, namely, that God would be subjected to a kind of fatum.  Here are his words (p. 555):  ’If they are propositions of eternal truth, which are such by their nature and not by God’s institution, if they are not true by a free decree of his will, but if on the contrary he has recognized them as true of necessity, because such was their nature, there is a kind of fatum to which he is subjected; there is an absolutely insurmountable natural necessity.  Thence comes also the result that the divine understanding in the infinity of its ideas has always and at the outset hit upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition; for it would be a contradiction to say that any exemplary cause had served as a plan for the acts of God’s understanding.  One would never that way find eternal ideas or any first intelligence.  One must say, then, that a nature which exists of necessity always finds its way, without any need for it to be shown.  How then shall we overcome the obstinacy of a Stratonist?’