e possibles, and consequently the regular as well as the irregular: there
must be a reason accounting for the preference for order and regularity,
and this reason can only be found in understanding. Moreover these very
truths can have no existence without an understanding to take cognizance of
them; for they would not exist if there were no divine understanding
wherein they are realized, so to speak. Hence Strato does not attain his
end, which is to exclude cognition from that which enters into the origin
of things.

190. The difficulty that M. Bayle has imagined in connexion with Strato
seems a little too subtle and far-fetched. That is termed: _timere, ubi non
est timor_. He makes another difficulty, which has just as slight a
foundation, namely, that God would be subjected to a kind of _fatum_. Here
are his words (p. 555): 'If they are propositions of eternal truth, which
are such by their nature and not by God's institution, if they are not true
by a free decree of his will, but if on the contrary he has recognized them
as true of necessity, because such was their nature, there is a kind of
_fatum_ to which he is subjected; there is an absolutely insurmountable
natural necessity. Thence comes also the result that the divine
understanding in the infinity of its ideas has always and at the outset hit
upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of
any cognition; for it would be a contradiction to say that any exemplary
cause had served as a plan for the acts of God's understanding. One would
never that way find eternal ideas or any first intelligence. One must say,
then, that a nature which exists of necessity always finds its way, without
any need for it to be shown. How then shall we overcome the obstinacy of a
Stratonist?'

191. But again it is easy to answer. This so-called _fatum_, which [247]
binds even the Divinity, is nothing but God's own nature, his own
understanding, which furnishes the rules for his wisdom and his goodness;
it is a happy necessity, without which he would be neither good nor wise.
Is it to be desired that God should not be bound to be perfect and happy?
Is our condition, which renders us liable to fail, worth envying? And
should we not be well pleased to exchange it for sinlessness, if that
depended upon us? One must be indeed weary of life to desire the freedom to
destroy oneself and to pity the Divinity for not having that freedom. M.
Bayle himself reasons thu