250.  As for physical evil in creatures, to wit their sufferings, M. Bayle contends vigorously against those who endeavour to justify by means of particular reasons the course of action pursued by God in regard to this.  Here I set aside the sufferings of animals, and I see that M. Bayle insists chiefly on those of men, perhaps because he thinks that brute beasts have no feeling.  It is on account of the injustice there would be in the sufferings of beasts that divers Cartesians wished to prove that they are only machines, quoniam sub Deo justo nemo innocens miser est:  it is impossible that an innocent creature should be unhappy under such a master as God.  The principle is good, but I do not think it warrants the inference that beasts have no feeling, because I think that, properly speaking, perception is not sufficient to cause misery if it is not accompanied [281] by reflexion.  It is the same with happiness:  without reflexion there is none.

  O fortunatos nimium, sua qui bona norint!

One cannot reasonably doubt the existence of pain among animals; but it seems as if their pleasures and their pains are not so keen as they are in man:  for animals, since they do not reflect, are susceptible neither to the grief that accompanies pain, nor to the joy that accompanies pleasure.  Men are sometimes in a state approaching that of the beasts, when they act almost on instinct alone and simply on the impressions made by the experience of the senses:  and, in this state, their pleasures and their pains are very slight.

251.  But let us pass from the beasts and return to rational creatures.  It is with regard to them that M. Bayle discusses this question:  whether there is more physical evil than physical good in the world? (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  II, ch. 75.) To settle it aright, one must explain wherein these goods and evils lie.  We are agreed that physical evil is simply displeasure and under that heading I include pain, grief, and every other kind of discomfort.  But does physical good lie solely in pleasure?  M. Bayle appears to be of this opinion; but I consider that it lies also in a middle state, such as that of health.  One is well enough when one has no ill; it is a degree of wisdom to have no folly: 

      Sapientia prima est,
  Stultitia caruisse.

In the same way one is worthy of praise when one cannot with justice be blamed: 

  Si non culpabor, sat mihi laudis erit.

That being the case, all the sensations not unpleasing to us, all the exercises of our powers that do not incommode us, and whose prevention would incommode us, are physical goods, even when they cause us no pleasure; for privation of them is a physical evil.  Besides we only perceive the good of health, and other like goods, when we are deprived of them.  On those terms I would dare to maintain that even in this life goods exceed evils, that our comforts exceed our discomforts, and that M. Descartes was justified in writing (vol.  I, Letter 9) ’that natural reason teaches us that we have more goods than evils in this life’.