wing that it was
created and conducted on theoretically superior principles.

Though Malebranche's conception was only a metaphysical theory,
metaphysical theories have usually their pragmatic aspects; and the
theory that the universe is as perfect as it could be marks a stage
in the growth of intellectual optimism which we can trace from the
sixteenth century. It was a view which could appeal to the educated
public in France, for it harmonised with the general spirit of
self-complacency and hopefulness which prevailed among the higher
classes of society in the reign of Louis XIV. For them the conditions
of life under the new despotism had become far more agreeable than in
previous ages, and it was in a spirit of optimism that they devoted
themselves to the enjoyment of luxury and elegance. The experience of
what the royal authority could achieve encouraged men to imagine that
one enlightened will, with a centralised administration at its command,
might accomplish endless improvements in civilisation. There was no age
had ever been more glorious, no age more agreeable to live in.

The world had begun to abandon the theory of corruption, degeneration,
and decay.

Some years later the optimistic theory of the perfection of the universe
found an abler exponent in Leibnitz, whom Diderot calls the father of
optimism. [Footnote: See particularly Monadologie, ad fin. published
posthumously in German 1720, in Latin 1728; Theodicee, Section 341
(1710); and the paper, De rerum originatione radicali, written in 1697,
but not published till 1840 (Opera philosophica, ed. Erdmann, p. 147
sqq).] The Creator, before He acted, had considered all possible worlds,
and had chosen the best. He might have chosen one in which humanity
would have been better and happier, but that would not have been
the best possible, for He had to consider the interests of the whole
universe, of which the earth with humanity is only an insignificant
part. The evils and imperfections of our small world are negligible
in comparison with the happiness and perfection of the whole cosmos.
Leibnitz, whose theory is deduced from the abstract proposition that
the Creator is perfect, does not say that now or at any given moment
the universe is as perfect as it could be; its merit lies in its
potentialities; it will develop towards perfection throughout infinite
time.

The optimism of Leibnitz therefore concerns the universe as a whole, not
the earth, and would ob