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February 1712

I said in my essays, 392, that I wished to see the demonstrations mentioned by M. Bayle and contained in the sixth letter printed at Trevoux in 1703.  Father des Bosses has shown me this letter, in which the writer essays to demonstrate by the geometrical method that God is the sole true cause of all that is real.  My perusal of it has confirmed me in the opinion which I indicated in the same passage, namely, that this proposition can be true in a very good sense, God being the only cause of pure and absolute realities, or perfections; but when one includes limitations or privations under the name of realities one can say that second causes co-operate in the production of what is limited, and that otherwise God would be the cause of sin, and even its sole cause.  And I am somewhat inclined to think that the gifted author of the letter does not greatly differ in opinion from me, although he seems to include all modalities among the realities of which he declares God to be the sole cause.  For in actual fact I think he will not admit that God is the cause and the author of sin.  Indeed, he explains himself in a manner which seems to overthrow his thesis and to grant real action to creatures.  For in the proof of the eighth corollary of his second proposition these words occur:  ’The natural motion of the soul, although determinate in itself, is indeterminate in respect of its objects.  For it is love of good in general.  It is through the ideas of good appearing [390] in individual objects that this motion becomes individual and determinate in relation to those objects.  And thus as the mind has the power of varying its own ideas it can also change the determinations of its love.  And for that purpose it is not necessary that it overcome the power of God or oppose his action.  These determinations of motion towards individual objects are not invincible.  It is this noninvincibility which causes the mind to be free and capable of changing them; but after all the mind makes these changes only through the motion which God gives to it and conserves for it.’  In my own style I would have said that the perfection which is in the action of the creature comes from God, but that the limitations to be found there are a consequence of the original limitation and the preceding limitations that occurred in the creature.  Further, this is so not only in minds but also in all other substances, which thereby are causes co-operating in the change which comes to pass in themselves; for this determination of which the author speaks is nothing but a limitation.