using them well. Otherwise they would not be true benefits, and
his goodness would be smaller than that we can conceive of in another
benefactor. (I mean, in a Cause that united with its gifts the sure skill
to make good use of them.)'

There already is the abuse or the ill effect of the preceding maxim. It is
not strictly true (though it appear plausible) that the benefits God
imparts to the creatures who are capable of felicity tend solely to their
happiness. All is connected in Nature; and if a skilled artisan, an
engineer, an architect, a wise politician often makes one and the same
thing serve several ends, if he makes a double hit with a single throw,
when that can be done conveniently, one may say that God, whose wisdom and
power are perfect, does so always. That is husbanding the ground, the time,
the place, the material, which make up as it were his outlay. Thus God has
more than one purpose in his projects. The felicity of all rational
creatures is one of the aims he has in view; but it is not his whole aim,
nor even his final aim. Therefore it happens that the unhappiness of some
of these creatures may come about _by concomitance_, and as a result of
other greater goods: this I have already explained, and M. Bayle has to
some extent acknowledged it. The goods as such, considered in themselves,
are the object of the antecedent will of God. God will produce as much
reason and knowledge in the universe as his plan can admit. One can
conceive of a mean between an antecedent will altogether pure and
primitive, and a consequent and final will. The _primitive antecedent will_
has as its object each good and each evil in itself, detached from all
combination, and tends to advance the good and prevent the evil. The
_mediate will_ relates to combinations, as when one attaches a good to an
evil: then the will will have some tendency towards this combination when
the good exceeds the evil therein. But the _final and decisive will_
results from consideration of all the goods and all the evils that enter
into our deliberation, it results from a total combination. This shows[190]
that a mediate will, although it may in a sense pass as consequent in
relation to a pure and primitive antecedent will, must be considered
antecedent in relation to the final and decretory will. God gives reason to
the human race; misfortunes arise thence by concomitance. His pure
antecedent will tends towards giving reason, as a great good, and
pr