198.  M. Diroys makes some apt remarks concerning this, which I will not repeat, since I have sufficiently answered the objection in more than one passage, and that has been the chief end of all my discourse.  But he makes one assertion with which I cannot agree.  He claims that the objection proves too much.  One must again quote his own words with M. Bayle, p. 1059:  ’If it does not behove the supreme Wisdom and Goodness to fail to do what is best and most perfect, it follows that all Beings are eternally, immutably and essentially as perfect and as good as they can be, since nothing can change except by passing either from a state less good to a better, or from a better to a less good.  Now that cannot happen if it does not behove God to fail to do that which is best and most perfect, when he can do it.  It will therefore be necessary that all beings be eternally and essentially filled with a knowledge and a virtue as perfect as God can give them.  Now all that which is eternally and essentially as perfect as God can make it proceeds essentially from him; in a word, is eternally and essentially good as he is, and consequently it is God, as he is.  That is the bearing of this maxim, that it is repugnant to supreme justice and goodness not to make things as good and perfect as they can be.  For it is essential to essential wisdom and goodness to banish all that is repugnant to it altogether.  One must therefore assert as a primary truth concerning the conduct of God in relation to creatures that there is nothing repugnant to this goodness and this wisdom in making things less perfect than [251] they could be, or in permitting the goods that it has produced either completely to cease to be or to change and deteriorate.  For it causes no offence to God that there should be other Beings than he, that is beings who can be not what they are, and do not what they do or do what they do not.’

199.  M. Bayle calls this answer paltry, but I find his counter-objection involved.  M. Bayle will have those who are for the two principles to take their stand chiefly on the assumption of the supreme freedom of God:  for if he were compelled to produce all that which he can, he would produce also sins and sorrows.  Thus the Dualists could from the existence of evil conclude nothing contrary to the oneness of the principle, if this principle were as much inclined to evil as to good.  There M. Bayle carries the notion of freedom too far:  for even though God be supremely free, it does not follow that he maintains an indifference of equipoise:  and even though he be inclined to act, it does not follow that he is compelled by this inclination to produce all that which he can.  He will produce only that which he wills, for his inclination prompts him to good.  I admit the supreme freedom of God, but I do not confuse it with indifference of equipoise, as if he could act without reason.  M. Diroys therefore imagines that the Dualists, in their insistence that