240. I find that the famous English prelate who wrote an ingenious book on the origin of evil, some passages of which were disputed by M. Bayle [275] in the second volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, while disagreeing with some of the opinions that I have upheld here and appearing to resort sometimes to a despotic power, as if the will of God did not follow the rules of wisdom in relation to good or evil, but decreed arbitrarily that such and such a thing must be considered good or evil; and as if even the will of the creature, in so far as it is free, did not choose because the object appears good to him, but by a purely arbitrary determination, independent of the representation of the object; this bishop, I say, in other passages nevertheless says things which seem more in favour of my doctrine than of what appears contrary thereto in his own. He says that what an infinitely wise and free cause has chosen is better than what it has not chosen. Is not that recognizing that goodness is the object and the reason of his choice? In this sense one will here aptly say: _Sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas_. [276] * * * * * ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL * * * * * PART THREE 241. Now at last I have disposed of the cause of moral evil; _physical evil_, that is, sorrows, sufferings, miseries, will be less troublesome to explain, since these are results of moral evil. _Poena est malum passionis, quod infligitur ob malum actionis_, according to Grotius. One suffers because one has acted; one suffers evil because one does evil. _Nostrorum causa malorum_ _Nos sumus_.