152. M. Bayle places the Greek philosopher Melissus, champion of the oneness of the first principle (and perhaps even of the oneness of substance) in conflict with Zoroaster, as with the first originator of duality. Zoroaster admits that the hypothesis of Melissus is more consistent with order and a priori reasons, but he denies its conformity with experience and a posteriori reasons. 'I surpass you', he said, 'in the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal mark of a good system.' But, in my opinion, it is not a very good explanation of a phenomenon to assign to it an ad hoc principle: to evil, a principium maleficum, to cold, a primum frigidum; there is nothing so easy and nothing so dull. It is well-nigh as if someone were to say that the
Peripatetics surpass the new mathematicians in the explanation of the phenomena of the stars, by giving them ad hoc intelligences to guide them. According to that, it is quite easy to conceive why the planets make their way with such precision; whereas there is need of much geometry and reflexion to understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears them towards the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them along, or with their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of Kepler, which satisfies appearances so well. A man incapable of relishing deep speculations will at first applaud the Peripatetics and will treat our mathematicians as dreamers. Some old Galenist will do the same with regard to the faculties of the Schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a chymific and a sanguific, and he will assign one of these ad hoc to each operation; he will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at what he will call the chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain through mechanical structure what passes in the body of an animal.
153. The explanation of the cause of evil by a particular principle, per principium maleficum, is of the same nature. Evil needs no such explanation, any more than do cold and darkness: there is neither primum frigidum nor principle of darkness. Evil itself comes only from privation; the positive enters therein only by concomitance, as the active enters by concomitance into cold. We see that water in freezing is capable of breaking a gun-barrel wherein it is confined; and yet cold is a certain privation of force, it only comes from the diminution of a movement which separates the particles of fluids. When this separating motion becomes weakened in the water by the cold, the particles of compressed air concealed in the water collect; and, becoming larger, they become more capable of acting outwards through their buoyancy. The resistance which the surfaces of the proportions of air meet in the water, and which opposes the force exerted by these portions towards dilation, is far less, and consequently the effect of the air greater, in large air-bubbles than in small, even though these small bubbles combined should form as great a mass as the large. For the resistances, that is, the surfaces, increase by the square, and the forces, that is, the contents or the volumes of the spheres of compressed air, increase by the cube, of their diameters. Thus it is by accident that privation involves action and force. I have already shown how privation is enough to cause error and malice, and
how God is prompted to permit them, despite that there be no malignity in him. Evil comes from privation; the positive and action spring from it by accident, as force springs from cold.
154. The statement that M. Bayle attributes to the Paulicians, p. 2323, is not conclusive, to wit, that free will must come from two principles, to the end that it may have power to turn towards good and towards evil: for, being simple in itself, it should rather have come from a neutral principle if this argument held good. But free will tends towards good, and if it meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason that this evil is concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were. These words which Ovid ascribes to Medea,
Video meliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor,
imply that the morally good is mastered by the agreeably good, which makes more impression on souls when they are disturbed by the passions.
155. Furthermore, M. Bayle himself supplies Melissus with a good answer; but a little later he disputes it. Here are his words, p. 2025: 'If Melissus consults the notions of order, he will answer that man was not wicked when God made him; he will say that man received from God a happy state, but that not having followed the light of conscience, which in accordance with the intention of its author should have guided him along the path of virtue, he has become wicked, and has deserved that God the supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger. It is therefore not God who is the cause of moral evil: but he is the cause of physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil. And this punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good principle, of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, I mean its justice, which is not less essential to it than its goodness. This answer, the most reasonable that Melissus can give, is fundamentally good and sound, but it may be disputed by something more specious and more dazzling. For indeed Zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle ought to have created man not only without actual evil, but also without the inclination towards evil; that God, having foreseen sin with all its consequences, ought to have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled man to moral good, and not to have allowed him any force for tending towards crime.' That is quite easy to say, but it is not
practicable if one follows the principles of order: it could not have been accomplished without perpetual miracles. Ignorance, error and malice follow one another naturally in animals made as we are: should this species, then, have been missing in the universe? I have no doubt but that it is too important there, despite all its weaknesses, for God to have consented to its abolition.