end that creatures of this kind should find their felicity in the
knowledge, the admiration and the love of the Supreme Being.'

This maxim appears to me not sufficiently exact. I grant that the happiness
of intelligent creatures is the principal part of God's design, for they
are most like him; but nevertheless I do not see how one can prove that to
be his sole aim. It is true that the realm of nature must serve the realm
of grace: but, since all is connected in God's great design, we must
believe that the realm of grace is also in some way adapted to that of
nature, so that nature preserves the utmost order and beauty, to render the
combination of the two the most perfect that can be. And there is no reason
to suppose that God, for the sake of some lessening of moral evil, would
reverse the whole order of nature. Each perfection or imperfection in the
creature has its value, but there is none that has an infinite value. Thus
the moral or physical good and evil of rational creatures does not
infinitely exceed the good and evil which is simply metaphysical, namely
that which lies in the perfection of the other creatures; and yet one would
be bound to say this if the present maxim were strictly true. When God
justified to the Prophet Jonah the pardon that he had granted to the
inhabitants of Nineveh, he even touched upon the interest of the beasts who
would have been involved in the ruin of this great city. No substance is
absolutely contemptible or absolutely precious before God. And the abuse or
the exaggerated extension of the present maxim appears to be in part the
source of the difficulties that M. Bayle puts forward. It is certain that
God sets greater store by a man than a lion; nevertheless it can hardly be
said with certainty that God prefers a single man in all respects to the
whole of lion-kind. Even should that be so, it would by no means follow
that the interest of a certain number of men would prevail over the [189]
consideration of a general disorder diffused through an infinite number of
creatures. This opinion would be a remnant of the old and somewhat
discredited maxim, that all is made solely for man.

119. IV. 'The benefits he imparts to the creatures that are capable of
felicity tend only to their happiness. He therefore does not permit that
these should serve to make them unhappy, and, if the wrong use that they
made of them were capable of destroying them, he would give them sure means
of always