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Updated: June 23, 2025
Augustine and the Thomists believe that all is determined. And one sees that their opponents resort also to the circumstances which contribute to our choice. Experience by no means approves the chimera of an indifference of equipoise; and one can employ here the argument that M. Bayle himself employed against the Cartesians' manner of proving freedom by the lively sense of our independence.
Bayle regarded the subject of evil as one of the great arsenals from whence his weapons were to be chiefly drawn. None of the articles in his famous Dictionary are more labored than those in which he treats of this subject. Monichian, and still more Paulician, almost assume the appearance of formal treatises upon the question; and both Marchionite and Zoroaster treat of the same subject.
Just as Feuerbach in combating speculative theology was driven to combat speculative philosophy, because he perceived in speculation the last support of theology, because he had to force the theologians to retreat from fictitious science to crude, repugnant faith, so religious doubt drove Bayle into doubts of the metaphysics which supported this faith.
There was no city in the world guilty of more blasphemy than this beautiful Geneva; and even to this day, as the sins of fathers descend to their children, the teachings of Calvin, of Bayle, and of Servetus hang like a chronic curse over the city to warp every noble feeling of Christian virtue.
But one must beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof M. Bayle speaks, and of saying that what one believes is indefensible: for that would be to cause reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that would destroy faith. Incomprehensibility does not prevent us from believing even natural truths.
I have been well pleased to present and to support these arguments of M. Bayle against vague indifference, as much for the elucidation of the subject as to confront him with himself, and to demonstrate that he ought therefore not to complain of the alleged necessity imposed upon God, of choosing the best way that is possible.
I said in my essays, 392, that I wished to see the demonstrations mentioned by M. Bayle and contained in the sixth letter printed at Trévoux in 1703. Father des Bosses has shown me this letter, in which the writer essays to demonstrate by the geometrical method that God is the sole true cause of all that is real.
It was curious to see him and Dr. Johnson together. Neither of them heard very distinctly; so each of them talked in his own way, and at the same time. Mr. M'Lean said, he had a confutation of Bayle, by Leibnitz. JOHNSON. 'A confutation of Bayle, Sir! What part of Bayle do you mean? The greatest part of his writings is not confutable: it is historical and critical. Mr.
Plutarch in his treatise on the contradictions of the Stoics and M. Bayle are both surprised that Chrysippus was not of the same opinion as Diodorus, since he favours fatality. But Chrysippus and even his master Cleanthes were on that point more reasonable than is supposed. That will be seen as we proceed. It is open to question whether the past is more necessary than the future.
We shall drag this false principle from its place of concealment into the open light of day, and thereby expose the utter futility, the inherent absurdity, of the whole atheistical hypothesis, to which it has so long imparted its deceptive power. If Leibnitz did not detect this false principle, and thereby overthrow the theory of Bayle, it was because he held this principle in common with him.
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