T — Tout est Bien
Original French
Ce fut un beau bruit dans les écoles, & même parmi les gens qui raisonnent, quand Leibnitz en parafrasant Platon bâtit son édifice du meilleur des mondes possibles, & qu’il imagina que tout allait au mieux. Il affirma dans le nord de l’Allemagne que Dieu ne pouvait faire qu’un seul monde. Platon lui avait au moins laissé la liberté d’en faire cinq: par la raison qu’il n’y a que cinq corps solides réguliers, le tétraèdre, ou la piramide à trois faces, avec la baze égale, le cube, l’éxaèdre, le dodécaèdre, l’icosaèdre. Mais comme nôtre monde n’est de la forme d’aucun des cinq corps de Platon, il devait permettre à Dieu une sixiéme manière.
Laissons là le divin Platon. Leibnitz qui était assurément meilleur géomètre que lui, & plus profond métaphysicien, rendit donc le service au genre humain de lui faire voir que nous devons être très-contents, & que Dieu ne pouvait pas davantage pour nous: qu’il avait nécessairement choisi entre tous les partis possibles, le meilleur, sans contredit.
Que deviendra le péché originel? lui criait-on. Il deviendra ce qu’il pourra, disaient Leibnitz & ses amis: mais en public il écrivait que le péché originel entrait nécessairement dans le meilleur des mondes.
Quoi! être chassé d’un lieu de délices, où l’on aurait vécu à jamais, si on n’avait pas mangé une pomme? Quoi! faire dans la misère, des enfans misérables qui souffriront tout, qui feront tout souffrir aux autres? quoi! éprouver toutes les maladies, sentir tous les chagrins, mourir dans la douleur, & pour rafraîchissement être brulé dans l'éternité des siècles; ce partage est-il bien ce qu’il y avait de meilleur? Cela n’est pas trop bon pour nous; & en quoi cela peut-il être bon pour Dieu?
Leibnitz sentait qu’il n’y avait rien à répondre; aussi fit-il de gros livres dans lesquels il ne s’entendait pas.
Nier qu’il y ait du mal, cela peut être dit en riant par un Lucullus qui se porte bien, & qui fait un bon diner avec ses amis & sa maîtresse dans le sallon d’Apollon; mais, qu’il mette la tête à la fenêtre, il verra des malheureux; qu’il ait la fiévre, il le sera lui-même.
Je n’aime point à citer; c’est d’ordinaire une besogne épineuse; on néglige ce qui précède & ce qui suit l’endroit qu’on cite, & on s’expose à mille querelles; il faut pourtant que je cite Lactance, père de l’Eglise; qui dans son chap. 13. de la colère de Dieu, fait parler ainsi Epicure. “Ou Dieu veut ôter le mal de ce monde, & ne le peut; ou il le peut, & ne le veut pas; ou il ne le peut, ni ne le veut; ou enfin il le veut & le peut. S’il le veut & ne le peut pas, c’est impuissance, ce qui est contraire à la nature de Dieu; s’il le peut & ne le veut pas, c’est méchanceté, & cela est non moins contraire à sa nature; s’il ne le veut ni ne le peut, c’est à la fois méchanceté & impuissance; s’il le veut & le peut (ce qui seul de ces partis convient à Dieu), d’où vient donc le mal sur la terre?”
L’argument est pressant; aussi Lactance y répond fort mal, en disant que Dieu veut le mal, mais qu’il nous a donné la sagesse avec laquelle on acquiert le bien. Il faut avoüer que cette réponse est bien faible en comparaison de l’objection; car elle suppose que Dieu ne pouvait donner la sagesse qu’en produisant le mal; & puis, nous avons une plaisante sagesse!
L'origine du mal a toujours été un abîme dont personne n’a pû voir le fond. C’est ce qui réduisit tant d’anciens philosophes & des législateurs à recourir à deux principes, l’un bon, l’autre mauvais. Tiphon était le mauvais principe chez les Egyptiens, Arimane chez les Perses. Les Manichéens adoptèrent, comme on sçait, cette théologie; mais comme ces gens-là n’avaient jamais parlé ni au bon, ni au mauvais principe, il ne faut pas les en croire sur leur parole.
Parmi les absurdités dont ce monde regorge, & qu’on peut mettre au nombre de nos maux, ce n’est pas une absurdité légère, que d’avoir supposé deux êtres tout-puissants, se battant à qui des deux mettrait plus du sien dans ce monde, & faisant un traité comme les deux médecins de Moliére: passez moi l’émétique, & je vous passerai la saignée.
Basilide, après les Platoniciens, prétendit, dès le premier siècle de l’église, que Dieu avait donné nôtre monde à faire à ses derniers anges; & que ceux-ci n’étant pas habiles, firent les choses telles que nous les voyons. Cette fable théologique tombe en poussiére par l’objection terrible, qu’il n’est pas dans la nature d’un Dieu tout-puissant & tout sage, de faire bâtir un monde par des architectes qui n’y entendent rien.
Simon qui a senti l’objection, la prévient en disant; que l’ange qui présidait à l’attelier est damné pour avoir si mal fait son ouvrage; mais la brulure de cet ange ne nous guérit pas.
L’avanture de Pandore chez les Grecs, ne répond pas mieux à l’objection. La boête où se trouvent tous les maux, & au fond de laquelle reste l’espérance, est à la vérité une allégorie charmante; mais cette Pandore ne fut faite par Vulcain que pour se venger de Prométhée, qui avait fait un homme avec de la bouë.
Les Indiens n’ont pas mieux rencontré; Dieu ayant créé l’homme, il lui donna une drogue qui lui assurait une santé permanente; l’homme chargea son âne de la drogue, l’âne eut soif, le serpent lui enseigna une fontaine, & pendant que l’âne bûvait, le serpent prit la drogue pour lui.
Les Syriens imaginèrent que l’homme & la femme ayant été créés dans le quatriéme ciel, ils s’avisérent de manger d’une galette, au lieu de l’ambrosie qui était leur mêts naturel. L’ambrosie s’exhalait par les pores, mais après avoir mangé de la galette, il falait aller à la selle. L'homme & la femme prièrent un ange de leur enseigner où était la garderobe. Voyez-vous, leur dit l’ange, cette petite planète, grande comme rien, qui est à quelque soixante millions de lieües d’ici, c’est là le privé de l’univers, allez y au plus vite: ils y allèrent, on les y laissa; & c’est depuis ce temps que nôtre monde fut ce qu’il est.
On demandera toujours aux Syriens, pourquoi Dieu permit que l'homme mangeat la galette, & qu’il nous en arrivat une foule de maux si épouvantable?
Je passe vîte de ce quatriéme ciel à Mylord Bolingbroke, pour ne pas m’ennuïer. Cet homme, qui avait sans doute un grand génie, donna au célèbre Pope son plan du tout est bien, qu’on retrouve en effet mot pour mot dans les œuvres posthumes de Mylord Bolingbroke, & que Mylord Shaftsbury avait auparavant inséré dans ses caractéristiques. Lisez dans Shaftsbury le chapitre des moralistes, vous y verrez ces paroles.
“On a beaucoup à répondre à ces plaintes des défauts de la nature. Comment est-elle sortie si impuissante & si défectueuse des mains d’un être parfait? mais je nie qu’elle soit défectueuse... sa beauté résulte des contrariétés, & la concorde universelle naît d’un combat perpétuel.... Il faut que chaque être soit immolé à d’autres; les végétaux aux animaux, les animaux à la terre..... & les loix du pouvoir central & de la gravitation, qui donnent aux corps célestes leur poids & leur mouvement, ne seront point dérangés pour l’amour d’un chétif animal, qui tout protégé qu’il est par ces mêmes loix, sera bientôt par elles réduit en poussiére.”
Bolingbroke, Shaftsbury, & Pope, leur metteur en œuvre, ne résolvent pas mieux la question que les autres: leur tout est bien, ne veut dire autre chose, sinon que le tout est dirigé par des loix immuables; qui ne le sçait pas? vous ne nous aprenez rien quand vous remarquez après tous les petits enfans, que les mouches sont nées pour être mangées par des araignées, les araignées par les hirondelles, les hirondelles par les pigrièches, les pigrièches par les aigles, les aigles pour être tués par les hommes, les hommes pour se tuer les uns les autres, & pour être mangés par les vers, & ensuite par les Diables, au moins mille sur un.
Voilà un ordre net & constant parmi les animaux de toute espèce; il y a de l’ordre partout. Quand une pierre se forme dans ma vessie, c’est une méchanique admirable; des sucs pierreux passent petit à petit dans mon sang; ils se filtrent dans les reins, passent par les urêtres, se déposent dans ma vessie, s’y assemblent par une excellente attraction Newtonienne; le caillou se forme, se grossit, je souffre des maux mille fois pires que la mort, par le plus bel arrangement du monde; un chirurgien ayant perfectionné l’art inventé par Tubal-Caïn, vient m’enfoncer un fer aigu & trenchant dans le périnée, saisit ma pierre avec ses pincettes, elle se brise sous ses efforts par un méchanisme nécessaire; & par le même méchanisme je meurs dans des tourments affreux; tout cela est bien; tout cela est la suite évidente des principes physiques inaltérables, j'en tombe d'accord, & je le savais comme vous.
Si nous étions insensibles, il n’y aurait rien à dire à cette physique. Mais ce n’est pas celà dont il s’agit; nous vous demandons s’il n’y a point de maux sensibles, & d’où ils viennent? Il n’y a point de maux, dit Pope dans sa quatriéme épitre sur le tout est bien; ou s’il y a des maux particuliers, ils composent le bien général.
Voilà un singulier bien général, composé de la pierre, de la goutte, de tous les crimes, de toutes les souffrances, de la mort, & de la damnation.
La chûte de l’homme est l’emplâtre que nous mettons à toutes ces maladies particulières du corps & de l’ame, que vous appellez santé générale; mais Shaftsburi & Bolingbroke se moquent du péché originel; Pope n’en parle point; il est clair que leur systême sappe la religion chrêtienne par ses fondements, & n’explique rien du tout.
Cependant, ce systême a été approuvé depuis peu par plusieurs théologiens, qui admettent volontiers les contraires; à la bonne heure, il ne faut envier à personne la consolation de raisonner comme il peut sur le déluge de maux qui nous inonde. Il est juste d’accorder aux malades désespérés, de manger de ce qu’ils veulent. On a été jusqu’à prétendre que ce systême est consolant. Dieu, dit Pope, voit d’un même œil périr le héros & le moineau, un atôme, ou mille planètes précipitées dans la ruine; une boule de savon, ou un monde se former.
Voilà, je vous l’avouë, une plaisante consolation; ne trouvez-vous pas un grand lénitif dans l’ordonnance de Mylord Shaftsbury, qui dit que Dieu n’ira pas déranger ses loix éternelles pour un animal aussi chétif que l’homme? Il faut avoüer du moins que ce chétif animal a droit de crier humblement, & de chercher à comprendre en criant, pourquoi ces loix éternelles ne sont pas faites pour le bien-être de chaque individu?
Ce systême du tout est bien, ne représente l’auteur de toute la nature, que comme un roi puissant & mal-faisant, qui ne s’embarrasse pas qu’il en coûte la vie à quatre ou cinq cent mille hommes, & que les autres traînent leurs jours dans la disette & dans les larmes, pourvû qu’il vienne à bout de ses desseins.
Loin donc que l’opinion du meilleur des mondes possible console, elle est désespérante pour les philosophes qui l’embrassent. La question du bien & du mal, demeure un cahos indébrouillable pour ceux qui cherchent de bonne foi; c’est un jeu d’esprit pour ceux qui disputent; ils sont des forçats qui joüent avec leurs chaînes. Pour le peuple non pensant, il ressemble assez à des poissons qu’on a transportés d’une riviére dans un réservoir; ils ne se doutent pas qu’ils sont là pour être mangés le carême; aussi ne sçavons-nous rien du tout par nous-mêmes des causes de nôtre destinée.
Mettons à la fin de presque tous les chapitres de métaphysique les deux lettres des juges Romains quand ils n’entendaient pas une cause, N. L. non liquet, Cela n’est pas clair.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the 73 articles in the 1764 first edition, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
There was a fine uproar in the schools, and even among people who reason, when Leibniz, paraphrasing Plato, built his edifice of the best of possible worlds, and imagined that all was for the best. He affirmed in the north of Germany that God could make only one world. Plato had at least left him the liberty of making five: on the ground that there are only five regular solids, the tetrahedron, or the pyramid with three faces and equal base, the cube, the hexahedron, the dodecahedron, the icosahedron. But since our world is not of the form of any of Plato’s five bodies, he should have allowed God a sixth way.
Let us leave the divine Plato there. Leibniz, who was assuredly a better geometer than he, and a deeper metaphysician, did the human race the service of showing it that we ought to be very content, and that God could do no more for us: that he had necessarily chosen among all possible courses the best, beyond dispute.
“What will become of original sin?” they cried at him. “Let it become what it may,” said Leibniz and his friends; but in public he wrote that original sin necessarily entered into the best of worlds.
What! To be driven from a place of delights, where one would have lived forever if one had not eaten an apple? What! To father in misery miserable children who will suffer everything, who will make others suffer everything? What! To experience every disease, to feel every sorrow, to die in pain, and, for refreshment, to be burned through the eternity of the ages: is this lot really the best there was? It is not very good for us; and in what way can it be good for God?
Leibniz felt that there was nothing to answer; so he wrote hefty books in which he did not understand himself.
To deny that there is evil: that can be said laughingly by a Lucullus in good health who is enjoying a fine dinner with his friends and his mistress in the hall of Apollo. But let him put his head out of the window, and he will see unhappy people; let him have a fever, and he will be one himself.
I do not like to quote; it is ordinarily a thorny business; one neglects what precedes and what follows the place one quotes, and one exposes oneself to a thousand quarrels. Yet I must quote Lactantius, father of the Church, who in his chap. 13 of the wrath of God makes Epicurus speak thus. “Either God wishes to take evil from this world, and cannot; or he can, and does not wish it; or he neither can nor wishes; or at last he wishes and can. If he wishes and cannot, that is impotence, which is contrary to the nature of God; if he can and does not wish it, that is malice, and that is no less contrary to his nature; if he neither wishes nor can, that is at once malice and impotence; if he wishes and can (which alone of these courses suits God), where, then, does evil on earth come from?”
The argument is pressing; so Lactantius answers it very badly, saying that God wills evil, but that he has given us the wisdom with which one acquires good. One must admit that this answer is very weak in comparison with the objection; for it supposes that God could give wisdom only by producing evil; and then, what comical wisdom we have!
The origin of evil has always been an abyss whose bottom no one has been able to see. That is what drove so many ancient philosophers and legislators to resort to two principles, one good, the other evil. Typhon was the bad principle among the Egyptians, Ahriman among the Persians. The Manicheans adopted this theology, as is known; but since these people had never spoken to either the good or the bad principle, they are not to be believed on their word.
Among the absurdities with which this world abounds, and which may be counted among our ills, it is not a light absurdity to have supposed two all-powerful beings fighting over which of the two would put more of his own into this world, and making a treaty like the two doctors of Molière: “Allow me the emetic, and I will allow you the bloodletting.”
Basilides, after the Platonists, maintained, from the first century of the church, that God had given our world to be made by his lowest-ranking angels; and that these, being unskilled, made things such as we see them. This theological fable falls to dust before the terrible objection that it is not in the nature of an all-powerful and all-wise God to have a world built by architects who understand nothing of it.
Simon, who felt the objection, forestalls it by saying that the angel who presided over the workshop is damned for having done his work so badly; but the burning of that angel does not cure us.
The adventure of Pandora among the Greeks answers the objection no better. The box in which all ills are found, and at the bottom of which hope remains, is in truth a charming allegory; but this Pandora was made by Vulcan only to avenge himself on Prometheus, who had made a man out of mud.
The Indians did no better. God having created man, he gave him a drug that assured him permanent health; the man loaded his ass with the drug, the ass grew thirsty, the serpent showed him a spring, and while the ass drank, the serpent took the drug for himself.
The Syrians imagined that the man and the woman, having been created in the fourth heaven, took it into their heads to eat a flat cake instead of the ambrosia that was their natural food. The ambrosia exhaled through the pores, but after eating the cake one had to empty one’s bowels. The man and the woman begged an angel to show them where the privy was. “Do you see,” the angel said to them, “that little planet, as big as nothing, which is some sixty million leagues from here? That is the privy of the universe; go there as fast as you can.” They went there, they were left there; and it is since that time that our world has been what it is.
One will always ask the Syrians why God permitted man to eat the cake, and such a frightful flood of ills to come upon us.
I pass quickly from that fourth heaven to Lord Bolingbroke, so as not to weary myself. This man, who had without doubt a great genius, gave the celebrated Pope his plan of all is well, which is in fact found word for word in Lord Bolingbroke’s posthumous works, and which Lord Shaftesbury had earlier inserted in his Characteristics. Read in Shaftesbury the chapter of the moralists, and you will find these words there.
“There is much to say in answer to these complaints about nature’s defects. How did she come so impotent and so defective from the hands of a perfect being? But I deny that she is defective… her beauty results from oppositions, and universal concord is born of a perpetual combat… Every being must be sacrificed to others; plants to animals, animals to the earth… and the laws of central power and of gravitation, which give the celestial bodies their weight and their movement, will not be disturbed for the love of a wretched animal, which, protected as it is by those same laws, will soon be reduced to dust by them.”
Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury and Pope, who put their ideas to work, do not resolve the question any better than the others: their all is well means nothing else but that the whole is directed by immutable laws. Who does not know that? You teach us nothing when you remark, after all the little children, that flies are born to be eaten by spiders, spiders by swallows, swallows by shrikes, shrikes by eagles, eagles to be killed by men, men to kill one another and to be eaten by worms, and then by devils, at least a thousand to one.
There is a clear and constant order among the animals of every species; there is order everywhere. When a stone forms in my bladder, it is an admirable mechanism; stony juices pass little by little into my blood; they filter through the kidneys, pass through the urethras, deposit themselves in my bladder, assemble there by an excellent Newtonian attraction; the stone forms, grows, I suffer ills a thousand times worse than death, by the most beautiful arrangement in the world; a surgeon, having perfected the art invented by Tubal-Cain, comes to thrust a sharp and cutting iron into my perineum, seizes my stone with his pincers, it breaks under his efforts by a necessary mechanism; and by the same mechanism I die in frightful torments; all that is well; all that is the evident consequence of unalterable physical principles. I agree to it, and I knew it as well as you.
If we were incapable of feeling, there would be no objection to this physics. But that is not the question; we ask whether suffering exists, and where it comes from. There are no ills, says Pope in his fourth epistle on all is well; or if there are particular ills, they compose the general good.
There is a singular general good, composed of stones, gout, all crimes, all sufferings, death and damnation.
The fall of man is the plaster we put on all these particular maladies of body and soul, which you call general health; but Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke laugh at original sin; Pope does not speak of it; it is clear that their system saps the Christian religion in its foundations, and explains nothing at all.
Yet this system has lately been approved by several theologians, who readily admit contraries; very well, one must not envy anyone the consolation of reasoning as he can about the flood of ills that inundates us. It is only fair to let the hopelessly ill eat what they wish. People have gone so far as to maintain that this system is consoling. God, says Pope, sees with the same eye the hero and the sparrow perish, an atom, or a thousand planets hurled into ruin; a soap bubble, or a world taking form.
There, I admit, is a comical consolation. Do you not find a great soothing remedy in the prescription of Lord Shaftesbury, who says that God will not go and disturb his eternal laws for an animal as wretched as man? One must at least admit that this wretched animal has the right to cry out humbly, and to seek to understand while crying out why these eternal laws are not made for the well-being of each individual.
This system of all is well represents the author of all nature only as a powerful and maleficent king, who does not trouble himself that it costs the lives of four or five hundred thousand men, and that the others drag out their days in want and in tears, provided he brings his designs to pass.
Far, then, from consoling, the opinion of the best of possible worlds drives the philosophers who embrace it to despair. The question of good and evil remains an inextricable chaos for those who seek in good faith; it is a game of wit for those who dispute; they are galley slaves playing with their chains. As for the unthinking people, they resemble well enough fishes that have been carried from a river into a reservoir; they do not suspect that they are there to be eaten in Lent; likewise, on our own we know nothing at all of the causes of our destiny.
Let us put at the end of almost every chapter of metaphysics the two letters of the Roman judges when they did not understand a case: N. L. non liquet, it is not clear.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Plain English translation of the same 73 articles, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
Leibniz set the schools buzzing—even people who think things through. He paraphrased Plato and built his system of the best possible world. He imagined that everything was going as well as it could. In northern Germany, he insisted that God could make only one world. Plato had at least left God free to make five. His reason was that there are only five regular solids. They are the tetrahedron, or a three-sided pyramid with an equal base; the cube; the hexahedron; the dodecahedron; and the icosahedron. But our world isn’t shaped like any of Plato’s five solids. He should have allowed God a sixth option.
Let’s leave the divine Plato there. Leibniz was certainly better at geometry and understood metaphysics more deeply. So he did humanity this service: he showed us we should be very happy. God couldn’t have done any more for us. Out of all possible choices, he had necessarily picked the best. There was no question about it.
“What will become of original sin?” people shouted at him. “It can fend for itself,” said Leibniz and his friends. But in public he wrote that original sin was a necessary part of the best of all worlds.
What! Driven out of a delightful place because we ate an apple? Without that, we would have lived there forever! What! Having miserable children while living in misery ourselves? They’ll suffer everything and make others suffer everything too! What! Going through every disease and feeling every sorrow? Dying in pain, then burning for all eternity as a little refreshment? Was that really the best fate available? It isn’t very good for us. And how can it be good for God?
Leibniz felt that there was no answer. So he wrote big books in which he couldn’t understand himself.
Someone like Lucullus can laugh and deny that there’s any evil. He’s healthy, enjoying a fine dinner with friends and his mistress in Apollo’s hall. But if he looks out of the window, he’ll see people suffering. If he catches a fever, he’ll suffer himself.
I don’t like quoting. It’s usually tricky work. You overlook what comes before and after the passage you quote. You lay yourself open to a thousand quarrels. Still, I have to quote Lactantius, a Father of the Church. In chap. 13. of la colère de Dieu, he gives Epicurus these words: “Either God wants to rid this world of evil but can’t. Or he can but doesn’t want to. Or he neither can nor wants to. Or, finally, he both wants to and can. If he wants to but can’t, he’s powerless. That goes against God’s nature. If he can but won’t, he’s malicious. That goes against his nature just as much. If he neither wants to nor can, he’s both malicious and powerless. If he wants to and can—the only option that suits God—where does evil on earth come from?”
This argument is hard to answer. Lactantius answers it very badly. He says God wants evil, but gave us wisdom so we can get what’s good. We have to admit how weak this answer is beside the objection. It assumes God couldn’t give us wisdom without producing evil. And what wonderful wisdom we have!
The origin of evil has always been a pit no one could see the bottom of. That drove so many ancient philosophers and lawmakers to turn to two powers. One was good, the other evil. The Egyptians’ evil power was Typhon; the Persians’ was Ahriman. As everyone knows, the Manichaeans adopted this theology. But these people had never spoken to either power, good or evil. We don’t have to take their word for it.
The world is full of absurdities. We can count them among our troubles. Here’s one that’s far from small: the idea of two all-powerful beings fighting. Each tries to put more of himself into this world than the other. They strike a deal like Molière’s two doctors: “Let me use the drug that makes you vomit, and I’ll let you use bloodletting.”
Following the Platonists, Basilides made a claim as early as the Church’s first century. God had given his lowest angels the job of making our world. They weren’t skilled, so they made things as we see them. One devastating objection brings this theological fable crashing down. An all-powerful, all-wise God wouldn’t hire architects who knew nothing about building a world.
Simon felt the force of the objection. To head it off, he said that the angel in charge of the workshop was damned for doing such a bad job. But burning that angel doesn’t cure us.
The Greek story of Pandora gives no better answer. The box holds every evil, with hope left at the bottom. That’s certainly a lovely allegory. But Vulcan made Pandora only to take revenge on Prometheus. Prometheus had made a man out of mud.
The Indians did no better. After God created man, he gave him a drug that would keep him healthy forever. The man loaded the drug onto his donkey. The donkey grew thirsty, and the snake showed it a spring. While the donkey drank, the snake took the drug for itself.
The Syrians imagined that man and woman were created in the fourth heaven. They decided to eat a flat cake instead of ambrosia, their natural food. Ambrosia passed out through their pores. But after eating the cake, they had to empty their bowels. They asked an angel to show them where the toilet was. “See that tiny little planet about sixty million leagues from here?” the angel said. “That’s the universe’s toilet. Get there as fast as you can.” They went, and were left there. Ever since then, our world has been what it is.
People will always ask the Syrians why God allowed man to eat the cake, bringing such a terrible mass of troubles down on us.
I’ll move quickly from that fourth heaven to Lord Bolingbroke, so I don’t get bored. This man certainly had a great mind. He gave the famous Pope his outline of all is well. In fact, it appears word for word in Lord Bolingbroke’s posthumous works. Lord Shaftesbury had already included it in his Characteristics. Read the chapter on the moralists in Shaftesbury, and you will find these words:
“There’s a lot to say in answer to these complaints about nature’s faults. How did it come so powerless and defective from a perfect being’s hands? But I deny that it’s defective… Its beauty comes from opposing forces. Universal harmony grows out of constant conflict… Each being must be sacrificed to others: plants to animals, animals to the earth… The laws of central force and gravity give heavenly bodies their weight and motion. Those laws won’t change for the sake of a feeble animal. They protect it, but they’ll soon turn it to dust.”
Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, and Pope, who put their ideas into words, solve the problem no better than the others. Their all is well means nothing more than that the whole is governed by unchanging laws. Who doesn’t know that? Every little child knows the things you point out. You teach us nothing. Flies are born to be eaten by spiders. Spiders are born to feed swallows, swallows to feed shrikes, shrikes to feed eagles. Eagles are born to be killed by people. People are born to kill each other and be eaten by worms. Then they’re eaten by devils—at least a thousand to one.
There’s a clear, constant order among animals of every kind. There’s order everywhere. When a stone forms in my bladder, the workings are wonderful. Stony fluids gradually enter my blood. They filter through my kidneys and pass through the urethras into my bladder. There they settle and gather together through a splendid Newtonian attraction. The stone forms and grows. The world’s finest arrangement makes me suffer pains a thousand times worse than death. A surgeon has improved on the art Tubal-cain invented. He pushes a sharp, cutting piece of steel into my perineum. He grabs my stone with his forceps. His efforts break it, as the mechanism requires. That same mechanism makes me die in horrible agony. All this is well. All this clearly follows from unchanging physical principles. I agree. I knew that just as well as you.
If we couldn’t feel anything, there would be nothing to say against this physics. But that isn’t the point. We ask you whether suffering exists, and where it comes from. “There’s no evil,” says Pope in his fourth epistle on all is well, “or if there are particular evils, they make up the general good.”
What a strange general good, made up of bladder stones, gout, every crime, every kind of suffering, death, and damnation.
The fall of man is our plaster for all these separate diseases of body and soul. You call them general health. But Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke make fun of original sin. Pope doesn’t mention it. Clearly their system attacks the very foundations of the Christian religion. And it explains nothing at all.
Still, several theologians have recently approved this system. They readily accept opposite ideas. Fine. We shouldn’t deny anyone the comfort of reasoning as best they can. We’re flooded with troubles, and that’s what they’re trying to make sense of. It’s only fair to let hopelessly ill patients eat whatever they want. People have even claimed that this system is comforting. “God,” says Pope, “sees a hero die with the same eye as a sparrow. It’s the same whether an atom or a thousand planets crash into ruin. It’s the same whether a soap bubble or a world takes shape.”
What a wonderful comfort that is, I admit! Lord Shaftesbury prescribes it: God won’t change his eternal laws for an animal as feeble as man. Don’t you find that a great relief? At least we must admit this feeble animal has a right to cry out humbly. While crying out, it has a right to try to understand. Why aren’t these eternal laws designed for each individual’s well-being?
This system of all is well makes the creator of all nature nothing more than a powerful king who does harm. Four or five hundred thousand people may die. The rest may drag out their days in hunger and tears. He doesn’t care, as long as he gets what he wants.
Belief in the best possible world doesn’t comfort the philosophers who accept it. It drives them to despair. For honest seekers, the question of good and evil remains a hopeless tangle. People who argue about it treat it as an intellectual game. They’re convicts playing with their chains. The unthinking public are like fish moved from a river to a holding pond. The fish don’t suspect they’re there to be eaten during Lent. Likewise, on our own we know nothing about what causes our fate.
At the end of almost every chapter on metaphysics, let’s put the two letters Roman judges used when they didn’t understand a case: N. L. non liquet. It isn’t clear.
About this section
T — Tout est Bien is part of Pocket Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is article 16 of 73 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
Open the work page for the full contents, every edition, and the download links, or go back to Explore to browse other complete works in the European tradition. The reader keeps your place when you are signed in and lets you compare the original with each translation, one edition at a time.