ch cures
us rather than medicine. Now this very fragility is a consequence of the
nature of things, unless we are to will that this kind of creature,
reasoning and clothed in flesh and bones, be not in the world. But that, to
all appearance, would be a defect which some philosophers of old would have
called _vacuum formarum_, a gap in the order of species.

15. Those whose humour it is to be well satisfied with Nature and with
fortune and not to complain about them, even though they should not be the
best endowed, appear to me preferable to the other sort; for besides that
these complaints are ill founded, it is in effect murmuring against the
orders of providence. One must not readily be among the malcontents in the
State where one is, and one must not be so at all in the city of God,
wherein one can only wrongfully be of their number. The books of human
misery, such as that of Pope Innocent III, to me seem not of the most
serviceable: evils are doubled by being given an attention that ought to be
averted from them, to be turned towards the good which by far
preponderates. Even less do I approve books such as that of Abbe Esprit,
_On the Falsity of Human Virtues_, of which we have lately been given a
summary: for such a book serves to turn everything wrong side out, and
cause men to be such as it represents them.

16. It must be confessed, however, that there are disorders in this life,
which appear especially in the prosperity of sundry evil men and in the
misfortune of many good people. There is a German proverb which even grants
the advantage to the evil ones, as if they were commonly the most
fortunate:

_Je kruemmer Holz, je bessre Kruecke:_
_Je aerger Schalck, je groesser Gluecke._

And it were to be desired that this saying of Horace should be true in our
eyes:

_Raro antecedentem scelestum_
_Deseruit pede poena claudo._

Yet it often comes to pass also, though this perchance not the most often,

[132]
_That in the world's eyes Heaven is justified,_

and that one may say with Claudian:

_Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum,_
_Absolvitque deos..._

17. But even though that should not happen here, the remedy is all prepared
in the other life: religion and reason itself teach us that, and we must
not murmur against a respite which the supreme wisdom has thought fit to
grant to men for repentance. Yet there object