The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

o Essai de Thiodicie, part, iii., No. 405 et suiv.

268 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras its result. You know, and Bayle himself agrees, that there exists a mixture of good and evil: and I repeat to you here what I have already said"; and I maintain that this good emanates from Providence, and is its work, and replaces in the sphere where it has been transported, an equivalent amount of evil which it has transmuted into good; I maintain that this good continues augmenting itself unceasingly and the evil which corresponds to it, diminishing in an equal proportion; I maintain finally that, having left absolute evil and having arrived at the point where you now are, you will arrive by the same road and by the same means, that is, by favour of time and of perfectibility, from the point where you are to absolute Good, the crown of perfection. This is the answer to your question. When and how does God take away evils? Still if you claim you cannot see any of this, I will reply that it is not for you, arguing with the weainess of your view, to deny the progress of Providence, you whose imperfect senses mistake all the time even the subjects within your range, and for whom the extremes are touching so forcibly, that it is impossible for you to distinguish upon the same dial the movement of the needle which traverses it in a cycle, from the movement of that which traverses it in less than a second; one of these needles appearing to you immobile and the other not existing for you. *

[f you deny what I affirm, bring other proofs of your denial than your weakness and cease, from the little corner where Nature has placed you, presuming to judge its immensity. StiU if you lack negative proofs, wait a moment more, and you shall have from me affirmative proofs. But if, going back, and wishing to sustain the argument of Epicurus which is giving way, you believe that you will succeed by saying that this philosopher had not asked, in the case where God was able and willed to remove evils, how he removed them, but why he did not remove them; I will reply

« Ci-dessus, 256 Examen.

l> MSm. de I'Acad. des Sciences, ann., 1765, p. 439.

Examinations of the Golden Verses 269

to you that this question is a pure sophism; that the how is implicitly contained in the why, to which I have replied in affirming that God, being able and willing to remove evils, removes them. And if you recall an iobjection that I have already overthrown concerning the manner in which he removes them, and that bringing you to judge of his ways, you would assume that he ought to remove them, not in a lapse of time so long that you would be unconscious of it, but in the twinkling of an eye; I would reply that this way wovtld be to you qmte as imperceptible as the other; and that furthermore, that which you demand exists, since the lapse of time of which you complain, however long it may appear to you, is less than the twinkling of an eye for the Being of beings who employs it, being absolutely nihil compared to Eternity. And from there I wiU take occasion to teU you that evil, in the way in which it is manifest in the world, being a sort of malady, God, who alone can cure it, knows also the sole remedy which may be applicable to it and that this sole remedy is time.

It seems to me that however little attention you may have given to what I have just said, you ought to be tempted to pass on from the knowledge of the remedy to that of the malady; but it is in vain that you wotild demand of me an explanation concerning its nature. This explanation is not necessary to overthrow the argument of Epicurus and that is all that I have wished to do. The rest depends upon you and I can only repeat with Lysis :

"God! Thou couldst save them by opening their eyes."

34. But no: 'tis for the humans of a race divine, To discern Error, and to see the Truth.

Hierocles who, as I have said, has not concealed the difficulty which is contained in these lines, has raised it, by making evident that it depends upon the free will of man, and

270 The Golden Ve,rses of Pythagoras