352.  Having spoken of the laws of bodies, that is, of the rules of motion, let us come to the laws of the union between body and soul, where M. Bayle believes that he finds again some vague indifference, something absolutely arbitrary.  Here is the way he speaks of it in his Reply (vol.  II, ch. 84, p. 163):  ’It is a puzzling question whether bodies have some natural property of doing harm or good to man’s soul.  If one answers yes, one plunges into an insane labyrinth:  for, as man’s soul is an immaterial substance, one will be bound to say that the local movement of certain bodies is an efficient cause of the thoughts in a mind, a statement contrary to the most obvious notions that philosophy imparts to us.  If one answers no, one will be constrained to admit that the influence of our organs upon our thoughts depends neither upon the internal qualities of matter, nor upon the laws of motion, but upon an arbitrary institution of the creator.  One must then admit that it depended altogether upon God’s freedom to combine particular thoughts of our soul with particular modifications of our body, even when he had once established all the laws for the action of bodies one upon another.  Whence it results that there is in the universe no portion of matter which by its proximity can harm us, save when God wills it; and consequently, that the earth is as capable as any other place of being the abode of the happy man....  In short it is evident that there is no need, in order to prevent the wrong choices of freedom, to transport man outside the earth.  God could do on earth with regard to all the acts of the will what he does in respect of the good works of the predestined when he settles their outcome, whether by efficacious or by sufficient grace:  and that grace, without in any way impairing freedom, is always followed by the assent of the soul.  It would be as easy for him on earth as in heaven to bring about the determination of our souls to a good choice.’

353.  I agree with M. Bayle that God could have so ordered bodies and [337] souls on this globe of earth, whether by ways of nature or by extraordinary graces, that it would have been a perpetual paradise and a foretaste of the celestial state of the blessed.  There is no reason why there should not be worlds happier than ours; but God had good reasons for willing that ours should be such as it is.  Nevertheless, in order to prove that a better state would have been possible here, M. Bayle had no need to resort to the system of occasional causes:  it abounds in miracles and in hypotheses for which their very originators confess there is no justification; and these are two defects such as will most of all estrange a system from true philosophy.  It is a cause for surprise, in the first place, that M. Bayle did not bethink himself of the System of Pre-established Harmony which he had examined before, and which for this matter was so opportune.  But as in this system all is