Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/125

CH. BENOUVIER AND L. PRAT, La Nouvelle Moriadologic. Ill The pre-established harmony consists merely in the fact that the onliT of nature keeps each monad informed of what is happening in every other, according to regular and necessary sequences. Its conception is only a more precise analysis of causality, not a rival to it. Yet the monads are also free ; i.e. (within their own peculiar limits), each can initiate completely spontaneous acts ("purs accidents," p. 50) the consequences of which are regulated by the pre-established harmony. In this they only follow God's example whose creation of the world was such an act of will. For the rest He is the author of the pre-established harmony, and the supreme Person (not in the illusory sense of the Athanasian metaphysic). He is consequently finite, being limited by the personality and freedom of the monads. But only the finite can be perfect (p. 463), though (p. 464) the creature must not be allowed to become as perfect as its creator (surely a curious relic of medievalism this, which shows that M. Renouvier's is still a jealous God !). Hence the explanation of the reality of evil, which baffled monism, and a vindication of the divine goodness and providence ; evil is due to human freedom. It follows that the present system of the world is the result of a fall (the unjust aggression of some monads leading to a demolition of the cosmic equilibrium and the aggregation of vast masses which man can no longer control), and contrasts painfully both with the perfect order before the experience of evil and the still higher perfection which God may be trusted hereafter to establish. The religious tone and aims of this theodicy are obvious. But in spite of their agreement with the spirit of Christianity, MM. Renouvier and Prat are clearly disposed to despair of reforming its traditional form. They claim to have preserved its chief doctrines, but they propound (pp. 533-35), a formidable and out- spoken list of dogmas which are "all contrary either to reason or to morality ". It is clear that the theistic monadism of this doctrine goes pretty far in the direction of pluralism. Nevertheless it may be doubted whether it goes quite far enough to be really secured against the reductio ad absurdum of a reabsorption by the One. These doubts apply to its solutions both of the problem of evil and of the problem of causation. In the first place, granting that the final aim of Philosophy is to construct a theory of life which will serve as a theodicy (or rather as a cosmodicy), it seems doubtful whether the measures advocated are sufficiently thorough to relieve God from the assumption of " the ignominious guilt of having made such men in such a world ". To make a world free to go wrong, which goes wrong so completely as ours, hardly seems the part either of goodness or of wisdom. And why must the posse peccare which is needed to constitute freedom necessarily result in actual sin, of which the potentiality would have done, psychologically, just as well ? Again, if actual sin is necessary, will it not remain