I have already observed that excess of physical pleasures would be a real evil, and the matter ought not to be otherwise; it is too important for the spirit to be free.  Lactantius (Divin.  Instit., lib. 3, cap. 18) had said that men are so squeamish that they complain of the slightest ill, as if it swallowed up all the goods they have enjoyed.  M. Bayle says, concerning this, that the very fact that men have this feeling warrants the [286] judgement that they are in evil case, since it is feeling which measures the extent of good or evil.  But I answer that present feeling is anything rather than the true measure of good and evil past and future.  I grant that one is in evil case while one makes these peevish reflexions; but that does not exclude a previous state of well-being, nor imply that, everything reckoned in and all allowance made, the good does not exceed the evil.

260.  I do not wonder that the pagans, dissatisfied with their gods, made complaints against Prometheus and Epimetheus for having forged so weak an animal as man.  Nor do I wonder that they acclaimed the fable of old Silenus, foster-father of Bacchus, who was seized by King Midas, and as the price of his deliverance taught him that ostensibly fine maxim that the first and the greatest of goods was not to be born, and the second, to depart from this life with dispatch (Cic., Tuscul., lib. 1).  Plato believed that souls had been in a happier state, and many of the ancients, amongst others Cicero in his Consolation (according to the account of Lactantius), believed that for their sins they were confined in bodies as in a prison.  They rendered thus a reason for our ills, and asserted their prejudices against human life:  for there is no such thing as a beautiful prison.  But quite apart from the consideration that, even according to these same pagans, the evils of this life would be counterbalanced and exceeded by the goods of past and future lives, I make bold to say that we shall find, upon unbiassed scrutiny of the facts, that taking all in all human life is in general tolerable.  And adding thereto the motives of religion, we shall be content with the order God has set therein.  Moreover, for a better judgement of our goods and our evils, it will be well to read Cardan, De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, and Novarini, De Occultis Dei Beneficiis.

261.  M. Bayle dilates upon the misfortunes of the great, who are thought to be the most fortunate:  the constant experience of the fair aspect of their condition renders them unaware of good, but greatly aware of evil.  Someone will say:  so much the worse for them; if they know not how to enjoy the advantages of nature and fortune, is that the fault of either?  There are nevertheless great men possessed of more wisdom, who know how to profit by the favours God has shown them, who are easily consoled for their misfortunes, and who even turn their own faults to account.  M. Bayle [287] pays no heed to that: