 It is true—as Müller, Liu, and McAteer point out—that Shaftesbury thinks there are certain things that appear to us to be bad or evil, things that we cannot understand how to reconcile with a perfectly good and all-powerful God. But there is in Shaftesbury an attempt at a rational argument for the conclusion that even those things are actually for the best (C 2.288–92, 2.363–5). There are numerous features of the world whose purpose we have not initially understood. Over time, however, we have come to see the purpose that many of those things serve, achieving a rational realization that what had initially seemed bad or evil is in actuality entirely to the good. But since we have had so many of these experiences in the past—of initially not understanding a thing and its appearing to us to be bad or evil, and of then coming to understand it and realizing that it is in fact good—it is reasonable to conclude that those things we currently do not understand and that appear to us as evil are also actually for the best. Imagine you know a very brilliant person. In the past she has done things you initially did not understand the rationale for at all. But in time you eventually came to see that those things were perfectly planned and executed, and you now realize that they were exactly the right things to have done (even if you hadn’t been able to see that initially). Now imagine that this person does something in the present that you do not understand the rationale for. Your past experience gives you reasonable grounds for trusting that in fact she has perfect justification for what she is doing—that her actions really are for the best, even if you currently cannot see the reasons for them. Given the finiteness of our minds and the infiniteness of God’s, it is only to be expected that God acts in certain ways we cannot understand. But in the past we have had so many experiences of examining natural objects we initially did not understand and coming to see the harmonious workings of all their wondrous mechanisms, it is reasonable to believe that those things we currently do not understand are in fact for the best. As Shaftesbury puts it,