ther than he, with regard to
'general and particular acts of will'. As God can do nothing without
reasons, even when he acts miraculously, it follows that he has no will
about individual events but what results from some general truth or will.
Thus I would say that God never has a _particular will_ such as this Father
implies, that is to say, _a particular primitive will_.

[257]
207. I think even that miracles have nothing to distinguish them from other
events in this regard: for reasons of an order superior to that of Nature
prompt God to perform them. Thus I would not say, with this Father, that
God departs from general laws whenever order requires it: he departs from
one law only for another law more applicable, and what order requires
cannot fail to be in conformity with the rule of order, which is one of the
general laws. The distinguishing mark of miracles (taken in the strictest
sense) is that they cannot be accounted for by the natures of created
things. That is why, should God make a general law causing bodies to be
attracted the one to the other, he could only achieve its operation by
perpetual miracles. And likewise, if God willed that the organs of human
bodies should conform to the will of the soul, according to the _system of
occasional causes_, this law also would come into operation only through
perpetual miracles.

208. Thus one must suppose that, among the general rules which are not
absolutely necessary, God chooses those which are the most natural, which
it is easiest to explain, and which also are of greatest service for the
explanation of other things. That is doubtless the conclusion most
excellent and most pleasing; and even though the System of Pre-established
Harmony were not necessary otherwise, because it banishes superfluous
miracles, God would have chosen it as being the most harmonious. The ways
of God are those most simple and uniform: for he chooses rules that least
restrict one another. They are also the most _productive_ in proportion to
the _simplicity of ways and means_. It is as if one said that a certain
house was the best that could have been constructed at a certain cost. One
may, indeed, reduce these two conditions, simplicity and productivity, to a
single advantage, which is to produce as much perfection as is possible:
thus Father Malebranche's system in this point amounts to the same as mine.
Even if the e