manner of action by general acts of will appeared to him preferable—­although there must thence result some superfluous events (and even bad if they are taken separately, that is my own addition)—­to another manner more composed and more regular; such is Father Malebranche’s opinion.  Nothing is more appropriate than this assumption (according to the opinion of M. Bayle, when he wrote his Divers Thoughts on the Comet) to solve a thousand difficulties which are brought up against divine providence:  ‘To ask God’, he says, ’why he has made things which serve to render men more wicked, that would be to ask why God has carried out his plan (which can only be of infinite beauty) by the simplest and most uniform methods, and why, by a complexity of decrees that would unceasingly cut across one another, he has not prevented the wrong use of man’s free will.’  He adds ’that miracles being particular acts of will must have an end worthy of God’.

205.  On these foundations he makes some good reflexions (ch. 231) concerning the injustice of those who complain of the prosperity of the wicked.  ‘I shall have no scruples’, he says, ’about saying that all those who are surprised at the prosperity of the wicked have pondered very little upon the nature of God, and that they have reduced the obligations of a cause which directs all things, to the scope of a providence altogether subordinate; and that is small-minded.  What then!  Should God, after having made free causes and necessary causes, in a mixture infinitely well fitted to show forth the wonders of his infinite wisdom, have established laws consistent with the nature of free causes, but so lacking in firmness that the slightest trouble that came upon a man would overthrow them entirely, to the ruin of human freedom?  A mere city governor will become an object of ridicule if he changes his regulations and orders as often as someone is pleased to murmur against him.  And shall God, whose laws concern a good so universal that all of the world that is visible to us perchance enters into it as no more than a trifling accessary, be bound to depart from his laws, because they to-day displease the one and to-morrow the other?  Or again because a superstitious person, deeming wrongly that a monstrosity presages something deadly, proceeds from his error to a criminal sacrifice?  Or because a good soul, who yet does not value virtue highly enough to [256] believe that to have none is punishment enough in itself, is shocked that a wicked man should become rich and enjoy vigorous health?  Can one form any falser notions of a universal providence?  Everyone agrees that this law of nature, the strong prevails over the weak, has been very wisely laid down, and that it would be absurd to maintain that when a stone falls on a fragile vase which is the delight of its owner, God should depart from this law in order to spare that owner vexation.  Should one then not confess that it is just as absurd to maintain