for all that the reasoning soul can demand of the body is less difficult than the organization which God has demanded of the seeds.  M. Bayle says (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, ch. 182, p. 1294) that it is only very recently there have been people who have understood that the formation of living bodies cannot be a natural process.  This he could say also (in accordance with his principles) of the communication between the soul and the body, since God effects this whole communication in the system of occasional causes to which this author subscribes.  But I admit the supernatural here only in the beginning of things, in respect of the first formation of animals or in respect of the original constitution of pre-established harmony between the soul and the body.  Once that has come to pass, I hold that the formation of animals and the relation between the soul and the body are something as natural now as the other most ordinary operations of Nature.  A close parallel is afforded by people’s ordinary thinking about the instinct and the marvellous behaviour of brutes.  One recognizes reason there not in the brutes but in him who created them.  I am, then, of the general opinion in this respect; but I hope that my explanation will have added clearness and lucidity, and even a more ample range, to that opinion.

Now when preparing to justify my system in face of the new difficulties of M. Bayle, I purposed at the same time to communicate to him the ideas which I had had for some time already, on the difficulties put forward by him[67] in opposition to those who endeavour to reconcile reason with faith in regard to the existence of evil.  Indeed, there are perhaps few persons who have toiled more than I in this matter.  Hardly had I gained some tolerable understanding of Latin writings when I had an opportunity of turning over books in a library.  I flitted from book to book, and since subjects for meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, I was charmed by the work of Laurentius Valla against Boethius and by that of Luther against Erasmus, although I was well aware that they had need of some mitigation.  I did not omit books of controversy, and amongst other writings of this nature the records of the Montbeliard Conversation, which had revived the dispute, appeared to me instructive.  Nor did I neglect the teachings of our theologians:  and the study of their opponents, far from disturbing me, served to strengthen me in the moderate opinions of the Churches of the Augsburg Confession.  I had opportunity on my journeys to confer with some excellent men of different parties, for instance with Bishop Peter von Wallenburg, Suffragan of Mainz, with Herr Johann Ludwig Fabricius, premier theologian of Heidelberg, and finally with the celebrated M. Arnauld.  To him I even tendered a Latin Dialogue of my own composition upon this subject, about the year 1673, wherein already I laid it down that God, having chosen the most perfect of all possible worlds,