424 PEINCIPLES OF NATURE AND GRACE 



everything is done as well as possible both for the 

 general good and also for the greatest individual good of 

 those who believe in it and who are satisfied with the 

 Divine government. And this belief and satisfaction 

 must inevitably be the characteristic of those who have 

 learned to love the Source of all good 66 . It is true that 

 supreme felicity (by whatever beatific vision, or knowledge 

 of God, it may be accompanied) can never be complete, 

 because God, being infinite, cannot be entirely known ' 7 . 

 Thus our happiness will never consist (and it is right 

 that it should not consist) in complete enjoyment, which 

 would leave nothing more to be desired and would make 

 our mind [esprit] stupid ; but it must consist in a per- 

 petual progress to new pleasures and new perfections 6K . 



66 ' We ought always to be content with the order of the past, 

 because it is in conformity with the absolute will of God, which 

 we know through what has come to pass ; but we must try to 

 make the future, so far as it depends upon us, in conformity with 

 the presumptive will of God or His commandments, to adorn our 

 Sparta and to labour at doing good, yet without vexing out-selves 

 when success does not come to us, in the firm belief that God will 

 be able to find the most fitting season in which to make changes 

 for the better. Those who are not content with the order of things 

 cannot flatter themselves that they love God as they ought.' 



1 Lettre a Arnauld (1690) (G. ii. 136; E. io8a). 



67 According to Leibniz's system, if a Monad were to know God 

 entirely, it would be God and would thus cease to be itself, which 

 is impossible. Yet Leibniz regards the relation of men to God as 

 so close that he calls them ' little gods, subject to the great God.' 

 Lettre a Arnauld (1687) (G. ii. 125). Cf. Nicholas of Cusa, Excitationes 

 ex Sermonibusj x. i88a: 'To be able always more and more to 

 understand (to conform oneself to the Creator) without end, is the 

 likeness of eternal wisdom.' 



68 'Felicity is to persons what perfection is to beings.' Paper 

 without a title (1686) (G. iv. 462). Cf. Ultimate Origination of Things, 

 PP. 345, 348. 



