Note 997 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

Bolingbroke, Fragment 50: "The seeming imperfection of the parts is necessary to the real perfection of the whole."—Wakefield.

The sentence quoted by Wakefield was copied by Bolingbroke from Leibnitz. Lord Shaftesbury adopted the same hypothesis in his Inquiry concerning Virtue. If, he says, our earth is a part only of some other system, and if what is ill in our system makes for the good of the general system, then there is nothing ill with respect to the whole. Rousseau, who heartily embraced the doctrine, remarks that "we cannot give direct proofs for or against, because these proofs depend on a complete knowledge of the constitution of the universe, and of the ends of its author."