the result before the attempt,--moreover why should He delay to
destroy that which He is to destroy?--impotent, for how else could He
have created an imperfect man?

"If an imperfect creation contradicts the faculties which man
attributes to God we are forced back upon the question, Is creation
perfect? The idea is in harmony with that of a God supremely
intelligent who could make no mistakes; but then, what means the
degradation of His work, and its regeneration? Moreover, a perfect
world is, necessarily, indestructible; its forms would not perish, it
could neither advance nor recede, it would revolve in the everlasting
circumference from which it would never issue. In that case God would
be dependent on His work; it would be co-eternal with Him; and so we
fall back into one of the propositions most antagonistic to God. If
the world is imperfect, it can progress; if perfect, it is stationary.
On the other hand, if it be impossible to admit of a progressive God
ignorant through a past eternity of the results of His creative work,
can there be a stationary God? would not that imply the triumph of
Matter? would it not be the greatest of all negations? Under the first
hypothesis God perishes through weakness; under the second through the
Force of his inertia.

"Therefore, to all sincere minds the supposition that Matter, in the
conception and execution of the worlds, is contemporaneous with God,
is to deny God. Forced to choose, in order to govern the nations,
between the two alternatives of the problem, whole generations have
preferred this solution of it. Hence the doctrine of the two
principles of Magianism, brought from Asia and adopted in Europe under
the form of Satan warring with the Eternal Father. But this religious
formula and the innumerable aspects of divinity that have sprung from