Thus we see that the opinion of these prelates tends to maintain
that a sequence of things where sin enters in may have been and has been,
in effect, better than another sequence without sin.

12. Use has ever been made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the
senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove
that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A little
acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows
enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to
harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling
and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. Do men relish
health enough, or thank God enough for it, without having ever been sick?
And is it not most often necessary that a little evil render the good more
discernible, that is to say, greater?

13. But it will be said that evils are great and many in number in
comparison with the good: that is erroneous. It is only want of attention
that diminishes our good, and this attention must be given to us through
some admixture of evils. If we were usually sick and seldom in good health,
we should be wonderfully sensible of that great good and we should be less
sensible of our evils. But is it not better, notwithstanding, that health
should be usual and sickness the exception? Let us then by our reflexion
supply what is lacking in our perception, in order to make the good of
health more discernible. Had we not the knowledge of the life to come, I
believe there would be few persons who, being at the point of death, were
not content to take up life again, on condition of passing through the same
amount of good and evil, provided always that it were not the same kind:
one would be content with variety, without requiring a better condition
than that wherein one had been.

14. When one considers also the fragility of the human body, one looks in
wonder at the wisdom and the goodness of the Author of Nature, who has made
the body so enduring and its condition so tolerable. That has often made me
say that I am not astonished men are sometimes sick, but that I am
astonished they are sick so little and not always. This also ought to make
us the more esteem the divine contrivance of the mechanism of animals,
whose Author has made machines so fragile and so subject to corruption[131]
and yet so capable of maintaining themselves: for it is Nature whi