adequately about an end, or about that bad end we have proposed to ourselves.  Thus it is always for lack of reason that one does an evil deed.  The author also puts forward the objection made by Epicurus in the book by Lactantius on the wrath of God.  The terms of the objection are more or less as follows.  Either God wishes to banish evils and cannot contrive to do so, in which case he would be weak; or he can abolish them, and will not, which would be a sign of malignity in him; or again he lacks power and also will, which would make him appear both weak and jealous; or finally he can and will, but in this case it will be asked why he then does not banish evil, if he exists?  The author replies that God cannot banish evil, that he does not wish to either, and that notwithstanding he is neither malicious [441] nor weak.  I should have preferred to say that he can banish evil, but that he does not wish to do so absolutely, and rightly so, because he would then banish good at the same time, and he would banish more good than evil.  Finally our author, having finished his learned work, adds an Appendix, in which he speaks of the Divine Laws.  He fittingly divides these laws into natural and positive.  He observes that the particular laws of the nature of animals must give way to the general laws of bodies, that God is not in reality angered when his laws are violated, but that order demanded that he who sins should bring an evil upon himself, and that he who does violence to others should suffer violence in his turn.  But he believes that the positive laws of God rather indicate and forecast the evil than cause its infliction.  And that gives him occasion to speak of the eternal damnation of the wicked, which no longer serves either for correction or example, and which nevertheless satisfies the retributive justice of God, although the wicked bring their unhappiness upon themselves.  He suspects, however, that these punishments of the wicked bring some advantage to virtuous people.  He is doubtful also whether it is not better to be damned than to be nothing:  for it might be that the damned are fools, capable of clinging to their state of misery owing to a certain perversity of mind which, he maintains, makes them congratulate themselves on their false judgements in the midst of their misery, and take pleasure in finding fault with the will of God.  For every day one sees peevish, malicious, envious people who enjoy the thought of their ills, and seek to bring affliction upon themselves.  These ideas are not worthy of contempt, and I have sometimes had the like myself, but I am far from passing final judgement on them.  I related, in 271 of the essays written to oppose M. Bayle, the fable of the Devil’s refusal of the pardon a hermit offers him on God’s behalf.  Baron Andre Taifel, an Austrian nobleman, Knight of the Court of Ferdinand Archduke of Austria who became the second emperor of that name, alluding to his name (which appears to mean Devil in German) assumed as his emblem a devil