best, the evil or the lesser good which he rejects will still be possible in itself.  Otherwise the necessity of good would be geometrical (so to speak) or metaphysical, and altogether absolute; the contingency of things would be destroyed, and there would be no choice.  But necessity of this kind, which does not destroy the possibility of the contrary, has the name by analogy only:  it becomes effective not through the mere essence of things, but through that which is outside them and above them, that is, through the will of God.  This necessity is called moral, because for the wise what is necessary and what is owing are equivalent things; and when it is always followed by its effect, as it indeed is in the perfectly wise, that is, in God, one can say that it is a happy necessity.  The more nearly creatures approach this, the closer do they come to perfect felicity.  Moreover, necessity of this kind is not the necessity one endeavours to avoid, and which destroys morality, reward and commendation.  For that which it brings to pass does not happen whatever one may do and whatever one may will, but because one desires it.  A will to which it is natural to choose well deserves most to be commended; and it carries with it its own reward, which is supreme happiness.  And as this constitution of the divine nature gives an entire satisfaction to him who possesses it, it is also the best and the most desirable from the point of view of the creatures who are all dependent upon God.  If the will of God had not as its rule the principle of the best, it would tend towards evil, which would be worst of all; or else it would be indifferent somehow to good and to evil, and guided by chance.  But a will that would always drift along at random would scarcely be any better for the government of the universe than the fortuitous concourse of corpuscles, without the existence of divinity.  And even though God should abandon himself to chance only in some cases, and in a certain way (as he would if he did not always tend entirely towards the best, and if he were capable of preferring a lesser good to a greater good, that is, an evil to a good, since that which [388] prevents a greater good is an evil) he would be no less imperfect than the object of his choice.  Then he would not deserve absolute trust; he would act without reason in such a case, and the government of the universe would be like certain games equally divided between reason and luck.  This all proves that this objection which is made against the choice of the best perverts the notions of free and necessary, and represents the best to us actually as evil:  but that is either malicious or absurd.

         &nb
sp;                                                     [389]
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EXCURSUS ON THEODICY

 392

published by the author in Memoires de Trevoux

July 1712