passage from Chrysippus; but since Plutarch assents to the fact, there is reason to believe that this comparison was not a poor one.  Plutarch replies in the first place that the world is not like a play to provide entertainment.  But that is a poor answer:  the comparison lies in this point alone, that one bad part may make the whole better.  He replies secondly that this bad passage is only a small part of the comedy, whereas human life swarms with evils.  This reply is of no value either:  for he ought to have taken into account that what we know is also a very small part of the universe.

335.  But let us return to the cylinder of Chrysippus.  He is right in saying that vice springs from the original constitution of some minds.  He was met with the objection that God formed them, and he could only reply by pointing to the imperfection of matter, which did not permit God to do better.  This reply is of no value, for matter in itself is indifferent to all forms, and God made it.  Evil springs rather from the Forms themselves in their detached state, that is, from the ideas that God has not produced by an act of his will, any more than he thus produced numbers and [327] figures, and all possible essences which one must regard as eternal and necessary; for they are in the ideal region of the possibles, that is, in the divine understanding.  God is therefore not the author of essences in so far as they are only possibilities.  But there is nothing actual to which he has not decreed and given existence; and he has permitted evil because it is involved in the best plan existing in the region of possibles, a plan which supreme wisdom could not fail to choose.  This notion satisfies at once the wisdom, the power and the goodness of God, and yet leaves a way open for the entrance of evil.  God gives perfection to creatures in so far as it is possible in the universe.  One gives a turn to the cylinder, but any roughness in its shape restricts the swiftness of its motion.  This comparison made by Chrysippus does not greatly differ from mine, which was taken from a laden boat that is carried along by the river current, its pace becoming slower as the load grows heavier.  These comparisons tend towards the same end; and that shows that if we were sufficiently informed concerning the opinions of ancient philosophers, we should find therein more reason than is supposed.

336.  M. Bayle himself commends the passage from Chrysippus (art.  ‘Chrysippus’, lit.  T) that Aulus Gellius quotes in the same place, where this philosopher maintains that evil has come by concomitance. That also is made clear by my system.  For I have demonstrated that the evil which God permitted was not an object of his will, as an end or a means, but simply as a condition, since it had to be involved in the best.  Yet one must confess that the cylinder of Chrysippus does not answer the objection of necessity.  He ought to have added, in the first place, that it is by the free choice of God that some of the possibles exist; secondly, that rational creatures act freely also, in accordance with their original nature, which existed already in the eternal ideas; and lastly, that the motive power of good inclines the will without compelling it.