In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty that is the foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In man, justice and charity are virtues; in God, they are attributes. What is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature. If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In God resides a sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human person? Yes, there is in God an infinite tenderness for his creatures: he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his divine providence. Plato knew this love of God well, and expressed it in those great words, "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that all things should be, as much as possible, like himself."[251] Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, God so loved men that he gave them his only Son. God is inexhaustible in his charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power, infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice. If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of God; it is therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end. And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems to accuse the justice and goodness of God.