without destroying it, it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his
glory determined him to form free creatures this powerful reason must have
prevailed over the grievous consequences which their freedom might have.' I
have endeavoured to develop this still further through _the reason of the
best and the moral necessity_ which led God to make this choice, despite
the sin of some creatures which is involved therein. I think that I have
cut down to the root of the difficulty; nevertheless I am well pleased, for
the sake of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of
solution to the peculiar difficulties of M. Bayle.

161. Here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. 148, p. 856): 'Would it in
a prince be a mark of his kindness: 1. To give to a hundred messengers as
much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred leagues? 2. To promise
a recompense to all those who should finish the journey without having
borrowed anything, and to threaten with imprisonment all those whom their
money should not have sufficed? 3. To make choice of a hundred persons, of
whom he would know for certain that there were but two who should earn the
recompense, the ninety-eight others being destined to find on the way
either a mistress or a gamester or some other thing which would make them
incur expenses, and which he would himself have been at pains to dispose in
certain places along their path? 4. To imprison actually ninety-eight of
these messengers on the moment of their return? Is it not abundantly
evident that he would have no kindness for them, and that on the contrary
he would intend for them, not the proposed recompense, but prison? [224]
They would deserve it, certainly; but he who had wished them to deserve it
and placed them in the sure way towards deserving it, should he be worthy
of being called kind, on the pretext that he had recompensed the two
others?' It would doubtless not be on that account that he earned the title
of 'kind'. Yet other circumstances may contribute, which would avail to
render him worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to
know those people, and to make trial of them; just as Gideon made use of
some extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least
squeamish among his soldiers. And even if the prince were to know already
the disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test
in order to make them known also to the others? Even though th