s produced immediately by God; the effect which
requires for its production several intermediate causes is, in
that respect, more imperfect. But if those things which were
made immediately by God were made to enable him to attain his
end, then the things which come after, for the sake of which the
first were made, are necessarily the most excellent of all.

Further, this doctrine does away with the perfection of God:
for, if God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something
which he lacks. Certainly, theologians and metaphysicians draw a
distinction between the object of want and the object of
assimilation; still they confess that God made all things for
the sake of himself, not for the sake of creation. They are
unable to point to anything prior to creation, except God
himself, as an object for which God should act, and are therefore
driven to admit (as they clearly must), that God lacked those
things for whose attainment he created means, and further that he
desired them.

We must not omit to notice that the followers of this
doctrine, anxious to display their talent in assigning final
causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their
theory--namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to
ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of
exhibiting their doctrine. For example, if a stone falls from a
roof on to someone's head, and kills him, they will demonstrate
by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man;
for, if it had not by God's will fallen with that object, how
could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent
circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you
will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was
blowing, and the man was walking that way. "But why," they will
insist, "was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very
time walking that way?" If you again answer, that the wind had
then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day
before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had
been invited by a friend, they will again insist: "But why was
the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?"
So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at
last you take refuge in the will of God--in other words, the
sanctuary of ignorance. So, again, when they survey the frame of
the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the
causes of s