376.  I saw M. de la Cour as well as Spinoza on my return from France by way of England and Holland, and I learnt from them a few good anecdotes on the affairs of that time.  M. Bayle says, p. 2770, that Spinoza studied Latin under a physician named Franz van den Ende.  He tells at the same time, on the authority of Sebastian Kortholt (who refers to it in the preface to the second edition of the book by his late father, De Tribus Impostoribus, Herberto L. B. de Cherbury, Hobbio et Spinoza) that a girl instructed Spinoza in Latin, and that she afterwards married M. Kerkering, who was her pupil at the same time as Spinoza.  In connexion with that I note that this young lady was a daughter of M. van den Ende, and that she assisted her father in the work of teaching.  Van den Ende, who was also called A. Finibus, later went to Paris, and there kept a boarding-school in the Faubourg St. Antoine.  He was considered excellent as an instructor, and he told me, when I called upon him there, that he would wager that his audiences would always pay attention to his words.  He had with him as well at that time a young girl who also spoke Latin, and worked upon geometrical demonstrations.  He had insinuated himself into M. Arnauld’s good graces, and the Jesuits began to be jealous of his reputation.  But he disappeared shortly afterwards, having been mixed up in the Chevalier de Rohan’s conspiracy.

377.  I think I have sufficiently proved that neither the foreknowledge nor the providence of God can impair either his justice or his goodness, [352] or our freedom.  There remains only the difficulty arising from God’s co-operation with the actions of the creature, which seems to concern more closely both his goodness, in relation to our evil actions, and our freedom, in relation to good actions as well as to others.  M. Bayle has brought out this also with his usual acuteness.  I will endeavour to throw light upon the difficulties he puts forward, and then I shall be in a position to conclude this work.  I have already proved that the co-operation of God consists in giving us continually all that is real in us and in our actions, in so far as it involves perfection; but that all that is limited and imperfect therein is a consequence of the previous limitations which are originally in the creature.  Since, moreover, every action of the creature is a change of its modifications, it is obvious that action arises in the creature in relation to the limitations or negations which it has within itself, and which are diversified by this change.

378.  I have already pointed out more than once in this work that evil is a consequence of privation, and I think that I have explained that intelligibly enough.  St. Augustine has already put forward this idea, and St. Basil said something of the same kind in his Hexaemeron, Homil. 2, ’that vice is not a living and animate substance, but an affection of the soul contrary to virtue, which arises