 A Real Property Theory of empirical evil, by contrast, insists that pain and suffering are positive realities and not mere absences (it is thus compatible with Matter Theory, but not with Absence or Privation Theory). As Malebranche notes, this is problematic in theological contexts, since God is supposed to be the ground of all positive beings (see Malebranche 1674–5 [1997: 348 and 392]). In a letter to a mathematician named Arnold Eckhard, G.W. Leibniz discusses this issue, and suggests “with some scruples” that “pain too is a perfection” (1677 [1969: 177]). That is a fairly unusual view, one that is made particularly poignant by the fact that Leibniz himself spent the last few years of his life in immense pain. He apparently had a habit of sleeping in a chair near his writing desk, and it