Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil · Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
PART TWO
131. XVI. 'One is just as much the cause of an event when one brings it about in moral ways, as when one brings it about in physical ways. A Minister of State, who, without going out of his study, and simply by utilizing the passions of the leaders of a faction, overthrew all their plots, would thus be bringing about the ruin of this faction, no less than if he destroyed it by a surprise attack.' I have nothing to say against this maxim. Evil is always attributed to moral causes, and not always to physical causes. Here I observe simply that if I could not prevent the sin of others except by committing a sin myself, I should be justified in permitting it, and I should not be accessary thereto, or its moral cause. In God, every fault would represent a sin; it would be even more than sin, for it would destroy Divinity. And it would be a great fault in him not to choose the best. I have said so many times. He would then prevent sin by something worse than all sins.
This maxim may pass also; I would wish only to change something in the phraseology. I would not take 'free' and 'indifferent' for one and the same thing, and would not place 'free' and 'determined' in antithesis. One is never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise; one is always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side than on another: but one is never necessitated to the choice that one makes. I mean here a _necessity_ absolute and metaphysical; for it must be admitted that God, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a _moral_ necessity. It must be admitted also that one is necessitated to the choice by a hypothetical necessity, when one actually makes the choice; and even before one is necessitated thereto by the very truth of the futurition, since one will do it. These hypothetical necessities do no harm. I have spoken sufficiently on this point already. 133. XVIII. 'When a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion, it is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to kill all the rest, not excepting even babes and sucklings.'
It seems to be assumed here that there are a hundred thousand times more damned than saved, and that children dying unbaptized are included among the former. Both these points are disputed, and especially the damnation of these children. I have spoken of this above. M. Bayle urges the same objection elsewhere (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 178, p. 1223): 'We see clearly', he says, 'that the Sovereign who wishes to exercise both justice and clemency when a city has revolted must be content with the punishment of a small number of mutineers, and [204] pardon all the rest. For if the number of those who are chastised is as a thousand to one, in comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration, and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take revenge were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to the service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost all the rebels.
Criminals who are executed are considered to expiate their crimes so completely by the loss of their life, that the public requires nothing more, and is indignant when executioners are clumsy. These would be stoned if they were known deliberately to give repeated strokes of the axe; and the judges who are present at the execution would not be immune from danger if they were thought to take pleasure in this evil sport of the executioners, and to have surreptitiously urged them to practise it.' (Note that this is not to be understood as strictly universal. There are cases where the people approve of the slow killing of certain criminals, as when Francis I thus put to death some persons accused of heresy after the notorious Placards of 1534. No pity was shown to Ravaillac, who was tortured in divers horrible ways. See the _French Mercury_, vol. I, fol. m., 455 _et seq._ See also Pierre Matthieu in his _History of the Death of Henry IV_; and do not forget what he says on page m. 99 concerning the discussion by the judges with regard to the torture of this parricide.)
'Finally it is an exceptionally notorious fact that Rulers who should be guided by St. Paul, I mean who should condemn to the extreme penalty all those whom he condemns to eternal death, would be accounted enemies of the human kind and destroyers of their communities. It is incontestable that their laws, far from being fitted, in accordance with the aim of legislators, to uphold society, would be its complete ruin. (Apply here these words of Pliny the Younger, _Epist._, 22, lib. 8: Mandemus memoriae quod vir mitissimus, et ob hoc quoque maximus, Thrasea crebro dicere solebat, Qui vitia odit, homines odit.)' He adds that it was said of the laws of Draco, an Athenian lawgiver, that they had not been written with ink, but with blood, because they punished all sins with the extreme penalty, and because damnation is a penalty even worse than death. But it must be borne in mind that damnation is a consequence of sin. Thus I [205] once answered a friend, who raised as an objection the disproportion existing between an eternal punishment and a limited crime, that there is no injustice when the continuation of the punishment is only a result of the continuation of the sin. I will speak further on this point later.
As for the number of the damned, even though it should be incomparably greater among men than the number of the saved, that would not preclude the possibility that in the universe the happy creatures infinitely outnumber those who are unhappy. Such examples as that of a prince who punishes only the leaders of rebels or of a general who has a regiment decimated, are of no importance here. Self-interest compels the prince and the general to pardon the guilty, even though they should remain wicked. God only pardons those who become better: he can distinguish them; and this severity is more consistent with perfect justice. But if anyone asks why God gives not to all the grace of conversion, the question is of a different nature, having no relation to the present maxim. I have already answered it in a sense, not in order to find God's reasons, but to show that he cannot lack such, and that there are no opposing reasons of any validity. Moreover, we know that sometimes whole cities are destroyed and the inhabitants put to the sword, to inspire terror in the rest. That may serve to shorten a great war or a rebellion, and would mean a saving of blood through the shedding of it: there is no decimation there. We cannot assert, indeed, that the wicked of our globe are punished so severely in order to intimidate the inhabitants of the other globes and to make them better. Yet an abundance of reasons in the universal harmony which are unknown to us, because we know not sufficiently the extent of the city of God, nor the form of the general republic of spirits, nor even the whole architecture of bodies, may produce the same effect.
134. XIX. 'Those physicians who chose, among many remedies capable of curing a sick man, whereof divers were such as they well knew he would take with enjoyment, precisely that one which they knew he would refuse to take, would vainly urge and pray him not to refuse it; we should still have just cause for thinking that they had no desire to cure him: for if they wished to do so, they would choose for him among those good medicines one which they knew he would willingly swallow. If, moreover, they knew that rejection of the remedy they offered him would augment his sickness to[206] the point of making it fatal, one could not help saying that, despite all their exhortations, they must certainly be desirous of the sick man's death.'
God wishes to save all men: that means that he would save them if men themselves did not prevent it, and did not refuse to receive his grace; and he is not bound or prompted by reason always to overcome their evil will. He does so sometimes nevertheless, when superior reasons allow of it, and when his consequent and decretory will, which results from all his reasons, makes him resolve upon the election of a certain number of men. He gives aids to all for their conversion and for perseverance, and these aids suffice in those who have good will, but they do not always suffice to give good will. Men obtain this good will either through particular aids or through circumstances which cause the success of the general aids. God cannot refrain from offering other remedies which he knows men will reject, bringing upon themselves all the greater guilt: but shall one wish that God be unjust in order that man may be less criminal? Moreover, the grace that does not serve the one may serve the other, and indeed always serves the totality of God's plan, which is the best possible in conception. Shall God not give the rain, because there are low-lying places which will be thereby incommoded?
Shall the sun not shine as much as it should for the world in general, because there are places which will be too much dried up in consequence? In short, all these comparisons, spoken of in these maxims that M. Bayle has just given, of a physician, a benefactor, a minister of State, a prince, are exceedingly lame, because it is well known what their duties are and what can and ought to be the object of their cares: they have scarce more than the one affair, and they often fail therein through negligence or malice. God's object has in it something infinite, his cares embrace the universe: what we know thereof is almost nothing, and we desire to gauge his wisdom and his goodness by our knowledge. What temerity, or rather what absurdity! The objections are on false assumptions; it is senseless to pass judgement on the point of law when one does not know the matter of fact. To say with St. Paul, _O altitudo divitiarum et sapientiae,_ is not renouncing reason, it is rather employing the reasons that we know, for they teach us that immensity of God whereof the Apostle speaks.
But therein we confess our ignorance of the facts, and we acknowledge, moreover, before we see it, that God does all the best [207] possible, in accordance with the infinite wisdom which guides his actions. It is true that we have already before our eyes proofs and tests of this, when we see something entire, some whole complete in itself, and isolated, so to speak, among the works of God. Such a whole, shaped as it were by the hand of God, is a plant, an animal, a man. We cannot wonder enough at the beauty and the contrivance of its structure. But when we see some broken bone, some piece of animal's flesh, some sprig of a plant, there appears to be nothing but confusion, unless an excellent anatomist observe it: and even he would recognize nothing therein if he had not before seen like pieces attached to their whole. It is the same with the government of God: that which we have been able to see hitherto is not a large enough piece for recognition of the beauty and the order of the whole. Thus the very nature of things implies that this order in the Divine City, which we see not yet here on earth, should be an object of our faith, of our hope, of our confidence in God. If there are any who think otherwise, so much the worse for them, they are malcontents in the State of the greatest and the best of all monarchs; and they are wrong not to take advantage of the examples he has given them of his wisdom and his infinite goodness, whereby he reveals himself as being not only wonderful, but also worthy of love beyond all things.
135. I hope it will be found that nothing of what is comprised in the nineteen maxims of M. Bayle, which we have just considered, has been left without a necessary answer. It is likely that, having often before meditated on this subject, he will have put there all his strongest convictions touching the moral cause of moral evil. There are, however, still sundry passages here and there in his works which it will be well not to pass over in silence. Very often he exaggerates the difficulty which he assumes with regard to freeing God from the imputation of sin. He observes _(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 161, p. 1024) that Molina, if he reconciled free will with foreknowledge, did not reconcile the goodness and the holiness of God with sin. He praises the sincerity of those who bluntly declare (as he claims Piscator did) that everything is to be traced back to the will of God, and who maintain that God could not but be just, even though he were the author of sin, even though he condemned innocence. And on the other side, or in other passages, he seems to show more approval of the opinions of those who preserve God's goodness at [208] the expense of his greatness, as Plutarch does in his book against the Stoics. 'It was more reasonable', he says, 'to say' (with the Epicureans) 'that innumerable parts' (or atoms flying about at haphazard through an infinite space) 'by their force prevailed over the weakness of Jupiter and, in spite of him and against his nature and will, did many bad and irrational things, than to agree that there is neither confusion nor wickedness but he is the author thereof.' What may be said for both these parties, Stoics and Epicureans, appears to have led M. Bayle to the [Greek: epechein] of the Pyrrhonians, the suspension of his judgement in respect of reason, so long as faith is set apart; and to that he professes sincere submission.
136. Pursuing his arguments, however, he has gone as far as attempting almost to revive and reinforce those of the disciples of Manes, a Persian heretic of the third century after Christ, or of a certain Paul, chief of the Manichaeans in Armenia in the seventh century, from whom they were named Paulicians. All these heretics renewed what an ancient philosopher of Upper Asia, known under the name of Zoroaster, had taught, so it is said, of two intelligent principles of all things, the one good, the other bad, a dogma that had perhaps come from the Indians. Among them numbers of people still cling to their error, one that is exceedingly prone to overtake human ignorance and superstition, since very many barbarous peoples, even in America, have been deluded by it, without having had need of philosophy. The Slavs (according to Helmold) had their Zernebog or black God. The Greeks and Romans, wise as they seem to be, had a Vejovis or Anti-Jupiter, otherwise called Pluto, and numerous other maleficent divinities. The Goddess Nemesis took pleasure in abasing those who were too fortunate; and Herodotus in some passages hints at his belief that all Divinity is envious; which, however, is not in harmony with the doctrine of the two principles.
_Placat equo Persis radiis Hyperiona cinctum,_ _Ne detur celeri victima tarda Deo._ But Mr. Hyde believes that they only made use of the sun and fire in their worship as symbols of the Divinity. It may be necessary to distinguish, as elsewhere, between the Wise and the Multitude. There are in the splendid ruins of Persepolis or of Tschelminaar (which means forty columns) sculptured representations of their ceremonies. An ambassador of Holland had had them sketched at very great cost by a painter, who had devoted a considerable time to the task: but by some chance or other these sketches fell into the hands of a well-known traveller, M. Chardin, according to what he tells us himself. It would be a pity if they were lost. These ruins are one of the most ancient and most beautiful monuments of the earth; and in this respect I wonder at such lack of curiosity in a century so curious as ours.
139. It remains to be proved that an ancient god or hero of the Germani was called Herman, Arimanius or Irminius. Tacitus relates that the three tribes which composed Germania, the Ingaevones, the Istaevones and the Herminones or Hermiones, were thus named from the three sons of Mannus. Whether that be true or not, he wished in any case to indicate that there was a hero named Herminius, from whom he was told the Herminones were named. Herminones, Hermenner, Hermunduri all mean the same, that is, Soldiers. Even in the Dark Ages Arimanni were _viri militares,_ and there is _feudum Arimandiae_ in Lombard law. 140. I have shown elsewhere that apparently the name of one part of Germania was given to the whole, and that from these Herminones or Hermunduri all the Teutonic peoples were named _Hermanni_ or _Germani_. The difference between these two words is only in the force of the aspiration: there is the same difference of initial letter between the _Germani_ of the Latins and _Hermanos_ of the Spaniards, or in the _Gammarus_ of the Latins and the _Hummer_ (that is, marine crayfish) of the Low Germans. [211] Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the whole: so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet this, according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and the Swiss. Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given _ob metum_. In fact it signifies a warrior: _Heer_, _Hari_ is army, whence comes _Hariban_, or 'call to Haro', that is, a general order to be with the army, since corrupted into _Arrièreban_. Thus Hariman or Ariman, German _Guerre-man_, is a soldier. For as _Hari_, _Heer_ means army, so _Wehr_ signifies arms, _Wehren_ to fight, to make war, the word _Guerre_, _Guerra_ coming doubtless from the same source. I have already spoken of the _feudum Arimandiae_: not only did Herminones or Germani signify the same, but also that ancient Herman, so-called son of Mannus, appears to have been given this name as being pre-eminently a warrior.
141. Now it is not the passage in Tacitus only which indicates for us this god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among these peoples, since Charlemagne found and destroyed near the Weser the column called _Irminsäule_, erected in honour of this god. And that combined with the passage in Tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that it was not that famous Arminius who was an enemy of the Romans, but a much greater and more ancient hero, that this cult concerned. Arminius bore the same name as those who are called Hermann to-day. Arminius was not great enough, nor fortunate enough, nor well enough known throughout Germania to attain to the honour of a public cult, even at the hands of remote tribes, like the Saxons, who came long after him into the country of the Cherusci. And our Arminius, taken by the Asiatics for the evil God, provides ample confirmation of my opinion. For in these matters conjectures confirm one another without any logical circle, when their foundations tend towards one and the same end.
_Teutates, pollensque feris altaribus Hesus,_ _Et Tamaris Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae._ Hesus was, it appears, the God of War, who was called Ares by the Greeks and Erich by the ancient Germani, whence still remains _Erichtag_, Tuesday. The letters R and S, which are produced by the same organ, are easily interchanged, for instance: _Moor_ and _Moos_, _Geren_ and _Gesen_, _Er war_ and _Er was_, _Fer_, _Hierro_, _Eiron_, _Eisen_. Likewise _Papisius_, _Valesius_, _Fusius_, instead of _Papirius_, _Valerius_, _Furius_, with the ancient Romans. As for Taramis or perhaps Taranis, one knows that _Taran_ was the thunder, or the God of Thunder, with the ancient Celts, called _Thor_ by the Germani of the north; whence the English have preserved the name 'Thursday', _jeudi_, _diem Jovis_. And the passage from Lucan means that the altar of Taran, God of the Celts, was not less cruel than that of Diana in Tauris: _Taranis aram non mitiorem ara Dianae Scythicae fuisse_.
143. It is also not impossible that there was a time when the western [213] or Celtic princes made themselves masters of Greece, of Egypt and a good part of Asia, and that their cult remained in those countries. When one considers with what rapidity the Huns, the Saracens and the Tartars gained possession of a great part of our continent one will be the less surprised at this; and it is confirmed by the great number of words in the Greek and German tongues which correspond so closely. Callimachus, in a hymn in honour of Apollo, seems to imply that the Celts who attacked the Temple at Delphi, under their Brennus, or chief, were descendants of the ancient Titans and Giants who made war on Jupiter and the other gods, that is to say, on the Princes of Asia and of Greece. It may be that Jupiter is himself descended from the Titans or Theodons, that is, from the earlier Celto-Scythian princes; and the material collected by the late Abbé de la Charmoye in his _Celtic Origins_ conforms to that possibility.
Yet there are opinions on other matters in this work by this learned writer which to me do not appear probable, especially when he excludes the Germani from the number of the Celts, not having recalled sufficiently the facts given by ancient writers and not being sufficiently aware of the relation between the ancient Gallic and Germanic tongues. Now the so-called Giants, who wished to scale the heavens, were new Celts who followed the path of their ancestors; and Jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was constrained to resist them. Just so did the Visigoths established in Gallic territory resist, together with the Romans, other peoples of Germania and Scythia, who succeeded them under Attila their leader, he being at that time in control of the Scythian, Sarmatic and Germanic tribes from the frontiers of Persia up to the Rhine. But the pleasure one feels when one thinks to find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history of fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and I know not whether I shall have been any more successful than Goropius Becanus, Schrieckius, Herr Rudbeck and the Abbe de la Charmoye.
144. Let us return to Zoroaster, who led us to Oromasdes and Arimanius, the sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked upon them as two eternal principles opposed to each other, although there is reason to doubt this assumption. It is thought that Marcion, disciple of Cerdon, was of this opinion before Manes. M. Bayle acknowledges that these men used lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not sufficiently [214] recognize their advantages or know how to apply their principal instrument, which was the difficulty over the origin of evil. He believes that an able man on their side would have thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it seems as though he himself, failing any other, wished to undertake a task so unnecessary in the opinion of many people. 'All the hypotheses' (he says, _Dictionary_, v., 'Marcion', p. 2039) 'that Christians have established parry but poorly the blows aimed at them: they all triumph when they act on the offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they have to sustain the attack.' He confesses that the 'Dualists' (as with Mr. Hyde he calls them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon have been routed by _a priori_ reasons, taken from the nature of God; but he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the _a posteriori_ reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.