1. Having so settled the rights of faith and of reason as rather to place
reason at the service of faith than in opposition to it, we shall see how
they exercise these rights to support and harmonize what the light of
nature and the light of revelation teach us of God and of man in relation
to evil. The _difficulties_ are distinguishable into two classes. The one
kind springs from man's freedom, which appears incompatible with the divine
nature; and nevertheless freedom is deemed necessary, in order that man may
be deemed guilty and open to punishment. The other kind concerns the
conduct of God, and seems to make him participate too much in the existence
of evil, even though man be free and participate also therein. And this
conduct appears contrary to the goodness, the holiness and the justice of
God, since God co-operates in evil as well physical as moral, and
co-operates in each of them both morally and physically; and since it seems
that these evils are manifested in the order of nature as well as in that
of grace, and in the future and eternal life as well as, nay, more than, in
this transitory life.
2. To present these difficulties in brief, it must be observed that freedom
is opposed, to all appearance, by determination or certainty of any kind
whatever; and nevertheless the common dogma of our philosophers states that
the truth of contingent futurities is determined. The foreknowledge of[124]
God renders all the future certain and determined, but his providence and
his foreordinance, whereon foreknowledge itself appears founded, do much
more: for God is not as a man, able to look upon events with unconcern and
to suspend his judgement, since nothing exists save as a result of the
decrees of his will and through the action of his power. And even though
one leave out of account the co-operation of God, all is perfectly
connected in the order of things, since nothing can come to pass unless
there be a cause so disposed as to produce the effect, this taking place no
less in voluntary than in all other actions. According to which it appears
that man is compelled to do the good and evil that he does, and in
consequence that he deserves therefor neither recompense nor chastisement:
thus is the morality of actions destroyed and all justice, divine and
human, shaken.
3. But even though one should grant to man this freedom wherewith he arrays
himself to his own hurt, the conduct of God could not but provide matter
for a criticism supported by the presumptuous ignorance of men, who would
wish to exculpate themselves wholly or in part at the expense of God. It is
objected that all the reality and what is termed the substance of the act
in sin itself is a production of God, since all creatures and all their
actions derive from him that reality they have. Whence one could infer not
only that he is the physical cause of sin, but also that he is its moral
cause, since he acts with perfect freedom and does nothing without a
complete knowledge of the thing and the consequences that it may have. Nor
is it enough to say that God has made for himself a law to co-operate with
the wills or resolutions of man, whether we express ourselves in terms of
the common opinion or in terms of the system of occasional causes. Not only
will it be found strange that he should have made such a law for himself,
of whose results he was not ignorant, but the principal difficulty is that
it seems the evil will itself cannot exist without co-operation, and even
without some predetermination, on his part, which contributes towards
begetting this will in man or in some other rational creature. For an
action is not, for being evil, the less dependent on God. Whence one will
come at last to the conclusion that God does all, the good and the evil,
indifferently; unless one pretend with the Manichaeans that there are two
principles, the one good and the other evil. Moreover, according to the
general opinion of theologians and philosophers, conservation being a [125]
perpetual creation, it will be said that man is perpetually created corrupt
and erring. There are, furthermore, modern Cartesians who claim that God is
the sole agent, of whom created beings are only the purely passive organs;
and M. Bayle builds not a little upon that idea.
4. But even granting that God should co-operate in actions only with a
general co-operation, or even not at all, at least in those that are bad,
it suffices, so it is said, to inculpate him and to render him the moral
cause that nothing comes to pass without his permission. To say nothing of
the fall of the angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if,
having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he
places him there notwithstanding. Man is exposed to a temptation to which
it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of
frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and brought
as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named 'original
sin'. Thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion, by this
means death and diseases being introduced, with a thousand other
misfortunes and miseries that in general afflict the good and the bad;
wickedness will even hold sway and virtue will be oppressed on earth, so
that it will scarce appear that a providence governs affairs. But it is
much worse when one considers the life to come, since but a small number of
men will be saved and since all the rest will perish eternally. Furthermore
these men destined for salvation will have been withdrawn from the corrupt
mass through an unreasoning election, whether it be said that God in
choosing them has had regard to their future actions, to their faith or to
their works, or one claim that he has been pleased to give them these good
qualities and these actions because he has predestined them to salvation.
For though it be said in the most lenient system that God wished to save
all men, and though in the other systems commonly accepted it be granted,
that he has made his Son take human nature upon him to expiate their sins,
so that all they who shall believe in him with a lively and final faith
shall be saved, it still remains true that this lively faith is a gift of
God; that we are dead to all good works; that even our will itself must be
aroused by a prevenient grace, and that God gives us the power to will and
to do. And whether that be done through a grace efficacious of itself, that
is to say, through a divine inward motion which wholly determines our [126]
will to the good that it does; or whether there be only a sufficient grace,
but such as does not fail to attain its end, and to become efficacious in
the inward and outward circumstances wherein the man is and has been placed
by God: one must return to the same conclusion that God is the final reason
of salvation, of grace, of faith and of election in Jesus Christ. And be
the election the cause or the result of God's design to give faith, it
still remains true that he gives faith or salvation to whom he pleases,
without any discernible reason for his choice, which falls upon but few
men.
5. So it is a terrible judgement that God, giving his only Son for the
whole human race and being the sole author and master of the salvation of
men, yet saves so few of them and abandons all others to the devil his
enemy, who torments them eternally and makes them curse their Creator,
though they have all been created to diffuse and show forth his goodness,
his justice and his other perfections. And this outcome inspires all the
more horror, as the sole cause why all these men are wretched to all
eternity is God's having exposed their parents to a temptation that he knew
they would not resist; as this sin is inherent and imputed to men before
their will has participated in it; as this hereditary vice impels their
will to commit actual sins; and as countless men, in childhood or maturity,
that have never heard or have not heard enough of Jesus Christ, Saviour of
the human race, die before receiving the necessary succour for their
withdrawal from this abyss of sin. These men too are condemned to be for
ever rebellious against God and plunged in the most horrible miseries, with
the wickedest of all creatures, though in essence they have not been more
wicked than others, and several among them have perchance been less guilty
than some of that little number of elect, who were saved by a grace without
reason, and who thereby enjoy an eternal felicity which they had not
deserved. Such in brief are the difficulties touched upon by sundry
persons; but M. Bayle was one who insisted on them the most, as will appear
subsequently when we examine his passages. I think that now I have recorded
the main essence of these difficulties: but I have deemed it fitting to
refrain from some expressions and exaggerations which might have caused
offence, while not rendering the objections any stronger.
6. Let us now turn the medal and let us also point out what can be said in
answer to those objections; and here a course of explanation through [127]
fuller dissertation will be necessary: for many difficulties can be opened
up in few words, but for their discussion one must dilate upon them. Our
end is to banish from men the false ideas that represent God to them as an
absolute prince employing a despotic power, unfitted to be loved and
unworthy of being loved. These notions are the more evil in relation to God
inasmuch as the essence of piety is not only to fear him but also to love
him above all things: and that cannot come about unless there be knowledge
of his perfections capable of arousing the love which he deserves, and
which makes the felicity of those that love him. Feeling ourselves animated
by a zeal such as cannot fail to please him, we have cause to hope that he
will enlighten us, and that he will himself aid us in the execution of a
project undertaken for his glory and for the good of men. A cause so good
gives confidence: if there are plausible appearances against us there are
proofs on our side, and I would dare to say to an adversary:
_Aspice, quam mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum._
7. _God is the first reason of things_: for such things as are bounded, as
all that which we see and experience, are contingent and have nothing in
them to render their existence necessary, it being plain that time, space
and matter, united and uniform in themselves and indifferent to everything,
might have received entirely other motions and shapes, and in another
order. Therefore one must seek the reason for the existence of the world,
which is the whole assemblage of _contingent_ things, and seek it in the
substance which carries with it the reason for its existence, and which in
consequence is _necessary_ and eternal. Moreover, this cause must be
intelligent: for this existing world being contingent and an infinity of
other worlds being equally possible, and holding, so to say, equal claim to
existence with it, the cause of the world must needs have had regard or
reference to all these possible worlds in order to fix upon one of them.
This regard or relation of an existent substance to simple possibilities
can be nothing other than the _understanding_ which has the ideas of them,
while to fix upon one of them can be nothing other than the act of the
_will_ which chooses. It is the _power_ of this substance that renders its
will efficacious. Power relates to _being_, wisdom or understanding to
_truth_, and will to _good_. And this intelligent cause ought to be
infinite in all ways, and absolutely perfect in _power_, in _wisdom_ and in
_goodness_, since it relates to all that which is possible. [128]
Furthermore, since all is connected together, there is no ground for
admitting more than _one_. Its understanding is the source of _essences_,
and its will is the origin of _existences_. There in few words is the proof
of one only God with his perfections, and through him of the origin of
things.
8. Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite,
cannot but have chosen the best. For as a lesser evil is a kind of good,
even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a
greater good; and there would be something to correct in the actions of God
if it were possible to do better. As in mathematics, when there is no
maximum nor minimum, in short nothing distinguished, everything is done
equally, or when that is not possible nothing at all is done: so it may be
said likewise in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less orderly than
mathematics, that if there were not the best (_optimum_) among all possible
worlds, God would not have produced any. I call 'World' the whole
succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be
said that several worlds could have existed in different times and
different places. For they must needs be reckoned all together as one world
or, if you will, as one Universe. And even though one should fill all times
and all places, it still remains true that one might have filled them in
innumerable ways, and that there is an infinitude of possible worlds among
which God must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without
acting in accordance with supreme reason.
9. Some adversary not being able to answer this argument will perchance
answer the conclusion by a counter-argument, saying that the world could
have been without sin and without sufferings; but I deny that then it would
have been _better_. For it must be known that all things are _connected_ in
each one of the possible worlds: the universe, whatever it may be, is all
of one piece, like an ocean: the least movement extends its effect there to
any distance whatsoever, even though this effect become less perceptible in
proportion to the distance. Therein God has ordered all things beforehand
once for all, having foreseen prayers, good and bad actions, and all the
rest; and each thing _as an idea_ has contributed, before its existence, to
the resolution that has been made upon the existence of all things; so that
nothing can be changed in the universe (any more than in a number) save its
essence or, if you will, save its _numerical individuality_. Thus, if the
smallest evil that comes to pass in the world were missing in it, it [129]
would no longer be this world; which, with nothing omitted and all
allowance made, was found the best by the Creator who chose it.
10. It is true that one may imagine possible worlds without sin and without
unhappiness, and one could make some like Utopian or Sevarambian romances:
but these same worlds again would be very inferior to ours in goodness. I
cannot show you this in detail. For can I know and can I present infinities
to you and compare them together? But you must judge with me _ab effectu_,
since God has chosen this world as it is. We know, moreover, that often an
evil brings forth a good whereto one would not have attained without that
evil. Often indeed two evils have made one great good:
_Et si fata volunt, bina venena juvant_.
Even so two liquids sometimes produce a solid, witness the spirit of wine
and spirit of urine mixed by Van Helmont; or so do two cold and dark bodies
produce a great fire, witness an acid solution and an aromatic oil combined
by Herr Hoffmann. A general makes sometimes a fortunate mistake which
brings about the winning of a great battle; and do they not sing on the eve
of Easter, in the churches of the Roman rite:
_O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est!_
_O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!_
11. The illustrious prelates of the Gallican church who wrote to Pope
Innocent XII against Cardinal Sfondrati's book on predestination, being of
the principles of St. Augustine, have said things well fitted to elucidate
this great point. The cardinal appears to prefer even to the Kingdom of
Heaven the state of children dying without baptism, because sin is the
greatest of evils, and they have died innocent of all actual sin. More will
be said of that below. The prelates have observed that this opinion is ill
founded. The apostle, they say (Rom. iii. 8), is right to disapprove of the
doing of evil that good may come, but one cannot disapprove that God,
through his exceeding power, derive from the permitting of sins greater
goods than such as occurred before the sins. It is not that we ought to
take pleasure in sin, God forbid! but that we believe the same apostle when
he says (Rom. v. 20) that where sin abounded, grace did much more [130]
abound; and we remember that we have gained Jesus Christ himself by reason
of sin. Thus we see that the opinion of these prelates tends to maintain
that a sequence of things where sin enters in may have been and has been,
in effect, better than another sequence without sin.
12. Use has ever been made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the
senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove
that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A little
acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows
enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to
harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling
and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. Do men relish
health enough, or thank God enough for it, without having ever been sick?
And is it not most often necessary that a little evil render the good more
discernible, that is to say, greater?
13. But it will be said that evils are great and many in number in
comparison with the good: that is erroneous. It is only want of attention
that diminishes our good, and this attention must be given to us through
some admixture of evils. If we were usually sick and seldom in good health,
we should be wonderfully sensible of that great good and we should be less
sensible of our evils. But is it not better, notwithstanding, that health
should be usual and sickness the exception? Let us then by our reflexion
supply what is lacking in our perception, in order to make the good of
health more discernible. Had we not the knowledge of the life to come, I
believe there would be few persons who, being at the point of death, were
not content to take up life again, on condition of passing through the same
amount of good and evil, provided always that it were not the same kind:
one would be content with variety, without requiring a better condition
than that wherein one had been.
14. When one considers also the fragility of the human body, one looks in
wonder at the wisdom and the goodness of the Author of Nature, who has made
the body so enduring and its condition so tolerable. That has often made me
say that I am not astonished men are sometimes sick, but that I am
astonished they are sick so little and not always. This also ought to make
us the more esteem the divine contrivance of the mechanism of animals,
whose Author has made machines so fragile and so subject to corruption[131]
and yet so capable of maintaining themselves: for it is Nature which cures
us rather than medicine. Now this very fragility is a consequence of the
nature of things, unless we are to will that this kind of creature,
reasoning and clothed in flesh and bones, be not in the world. But that, to
all appearance, would be a defect which some philosophers of old would have
called _vacuum formarum_, a gap in the order of species.
15. Those whose humour it is to be well satisfied with Nature and with
fortune and not to complain about them, even though they should not be the
best endowed, appear to me preferable to the other sort; for besides that
these complaints are ill founded, it is in effect murmuring against the
orders of providence. One must not readily be among the malcontents in the
State where one is, and one must not be so at all in the city of God,
wherein one can only wrongfully be of their number. The books of human
misery, such as that of Pope Innocent III, to me seem not of the most
serviceable: evils are doubled by being given an attention that ought to be
averted from them, to be turned towards the good which by far
preponderates. Even less do I approve books such as that of Abbé Esprit,
_On the Falsity of Human Virtues_, of which we have lately been given a
summary: for such a book serves to turn everything wrong side out, and
cause men to be such as it represents them.
16. It must be confessed, however, that there are disorders in this life,
which appear especially in the prosperity of sundry evil men and in the
misfortune of many good people. There is a German proverb which even grants
the advantage to the evil ones, as if they were commonly the most
fortunate:
_Je krümmer Holz, je bessre Krücke:_
_Je ärger Schalck, je grösser Glücke._
And it were to be desired that this saying of Horace should be true in our
eyes:
_Raro antecedentem scelestum_
_Deseruit pede poena claudo._
Yet it often comes to pass also, though this perchance not the most often,
[132]
_That in the world's eyes Heaven is justified,_
and that one may say with Claudian:
_Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum,_
_Absolvitque deos..._
17. But even though that should not happen here, the remedy is all prepared
in the other life: religion and reason itself teach us that, and we must
not murmur against a respite which the supreme wisdom has thought fit to
grant to men for repentance. Yet there objections multiply on another side,
when one considers salvation and damnation: for it appears strange that,
even in the great future of eternity, evil should have the advantage over
good, under the supreme authority of him who is the sovereign good, since
there will be many that are called and few that are chosen or are saved. It
is true that one sees from some lines of Prudentius (Hymn. ante Somnum),
_Idem tamen benignus_
_Ultor retundit iram,_
_Paucosque non piorum_
_Patitur perire in aevum,_
that divers men believed in his time that the number of those wicked enough
to be damned would be very small. To some indeed it seems that men believed
at that time in a sphere between Hell and Paradise; that this same
Prudentius speaks as if he were satisfied with this sphere; that St.
Gregory of Nyssa also inclines in that direction, and that St. Jerome leans
towards the opinion according whereunto all Christians would finally be
taken into grace. A saying of St. Paul which he himself gives out as
mysterious, stating that all Israel will be saved, has provided much food
for reflexion. Sundry pious persons, learned also, but daring, have revived
the opinion of Origen, who maintains that good will predominate in due
time, in all and everywhere, and that all rational creatures, even the bad
angels, will become at last holy and blessed. The book of the eternal
Gospel, published lately in German and supported by a great and learned
work entitled [Greek: 'Apokatástasis pántôn], has caused much stir over
this great paradox. M. le Clerc also has ingeniously pleaded the cause of
the Origenists, but without declaring himself for them.
[133]
18. There is a man of wit who, pushing my principle of harmony even to
arbitrary suppositions that I in no wise approve, has created for himself a
theology well-nigh astronomical. He believes that the present confusion in
this world below began when the Presiding Angel of the globe of the earth,
which was still a sun (that is, a star that was fixed and luminous of
itself) committed a sin with some lesser angels of his department, perhaps
rising inopportunely against an angel of a greater sun; that
simultaneously, by the Pre-established Harmony of the Realms of Nature and
of Grace, and consequently by natural causes occurring at the appointed
time, our globe was covered with stains, rendered opaque and driven from
its place; which has made it become a wandering star or planet, that is, a
Satellite of another sun, and even perhaps of that one whose superiority
its angel refused to recognize; and that therein consists the fall of
Lucifer. Now the chief of the bad angels, who in Holy Scripture is named
the prince, and even the god of this world, being, with the angels of his
train, envious of that rational animal which walks on the surface of this
globe, and which God has set up there perhaps to compensate himself for
their fall, strives to render it accessary in their crimes and a
participator in their misfortunes. Whereupon Jesus Christ came to save men.
He is the eternal Son of God, even as he is his only Son; but (according to
some ancient Christians, and according to the author of this hypothesis)
having taken upon him at first, from the beginning of things, the most
excellent nature among created beings, to bring them all to perfection, he
set himself amongst them: and this is the second filiation, whereby he is
the first-born of all creatures. This is he whom the Cabalists called Adam
Kadmon. Haply he had planted his tabernacle in that great sun which
illumines us; but he came at last into this globe where we are, he was born
of the Virgin, and took human nature upon him to save mankind from the
hands of their enemy and his. And when the time of judgement shall draw
near, when the present face of our globe shall be about to perish, he will
return to it in visible form, thence to withdraw the good, transplanting
them, it may be, into the sun, and to punish here the wicked with the
demons that have allured them; then the globe of the earth will begin to
burn and will be perhaps a comet. This fire will last for aeons upon aeons.
The tail of the comet is intended by the smoke which will rise incessantly,
according to the Apocalypse, and this fire will be hell, or the second[134]
death whereof Holy Scripture speaks. But at last hell will render up its
dead, death itself will be destroyed; reason and peace will begin to hold
sway again in the spirits that had been perverted; they will be sensible of
their error, they will adore their Creator, and will even begin to love him
all the more for seeing the greatness of the abyss whence they emerge.
Simultaneously (by virtue of the _harmonic parallelism_ of the Realms of
Nature and of Grace) this long and great conflagration will have purged the
earth's globe of its stains. It will become again a sun; its Presiding
Angel will resume his place with the angels of his train; humans that were
damned shall be with them numbered amongst the good angels; this chief of
our globe shall render homage to the Messiah, chief of created beings. The
glory of this angel reconciled shall be greater than it was before his
fall.
_Inque Deos iterum factorum lege receptus_
_Aureus aeternum noster regnabit Apollo._
The vision seemed to me pleasing, and worthy of a follower of Origen: but
we have no need of such hypothesis or fictions, where Wit plays a greater
part than Revelation, and which even Reason cannot turn to account. For it
does not appear that there is one principal place in the known universe
deserving in preference to the rest to be the seat of the eldest of created
beings; and the sun of our system at least is not it.
19. Holding then to the established doctrine that the number of men damned
eternally will be incomparably greater than that of the saved, we must say
that the evil could not but seem to be almost as nothing in comparison with
the good, when one contemplates the true vastness of the city of God.
Coelius Secundus Curio wrote a little book, _De Amplitudine Regni
Coelestis_, which was reprinted not long since; but he is indeed far from
having apprehended the compass of the kingdom of heaven. The ancients had
puny ideas on the works of God, and St. Augustine, for want of knowing
modern discoveries, was at a loss when there was question of explaining the
prevalence of evil. It seemed to the ancients that there was only one earth
inhabited, and even of that men held the antipodes in dread: the remainder
of the world was, according to them, a few shining globes and a few
crystalline spheres. To-day, whatever bounds are given or not given to the
universe, it must be acknowledged that there is an infinite number of
globes, as great as and greater than ours, which have as much right as[135]
it to hold rational inhabitants, though it follows not at all that they are
human. It is only one planet, that is to say one of the six principal
satellites of our sun; and as all fixed stars are suns also, we see how
small a thing our earth is in relation to visible things, since it is only
an appendix of one amongst them. It may be that all suns are peopled only
by blessed creatures, and nothing constrains us to think that many are
damned, for few instances or few samples suffice to show the advantage
which good extracts from evil. Moreover, since there is no reason for the
belief that there are stars everywhere, is it not possible that there may
be a great space beyond the region of the stars? Whether it be the Empyrean
Heaven, or not, this immense space encircling all this region may in any
case be filled with happiness and glory. It can be imagined as like the
Ocean, whither flow the rivers of all blessed creatures, when they shall
have reached their perfection in the system of the stars. What will become
of the consideration of our globe and its inhabitants? Will it not be
something incomparably less than a physical point, since our earth is as a
point in comparison with the distance of some fixed stars? Thus since the
proportion of that part of the universe which we know is almost lost in
nothingness compared with that which is unknown, and which we yet have
cause to assume, and since all the evils that may be raised in objection
before us are in this near nothingness, haply it may be that all evils are
almost nothingness in comparison with the good things which are in the
universe.
20. But it is necessary also to meet the more speculative and metaphysical
difficulties which have been mentioned, and which concern the cause of
evil. The question is asked first of all, whence does evil come? _Si Deus
est, unde malum? Si non est, unde bonum?_ The ancients attributed the cause
of evil to _matter_, which they believed uncreate and independent of God:
but we, who derive all being from God, where shall we find the source of
evil? The answer is, that it must be sought in the ideal nature of the
creature, in so far as this nature is contained in the eternal verities
which are in the understanding of God, independently of his will. For we
must consider that there is an _original imperfection in the creature_
before sin, because the creature is limited in its essence; whence ensues
that it cannot know all, and that it can deceive itself and commit other
errors. Plato said in _Timaeus_ that the world originated in [136]
Understanding united to Necessity. Others have united God and Nature. This
can be given a reasonable meaning. God will be the Understanding; and the
Necessity, that is, the essential nature of things, will be the object of
the understanding, in so far as this object consists in the eternal
verities. But this object is inward and abides in the divine understanding.
And therein is found not only the primitive form of good, but also the
origin of evil: the Region of the Eternal Verities must be substituted for
matter when we are concerned with seeking out the source of things.
This region is the ideal cause of evil (as it were) as well as of good:
but, properly speaking, the formal character of evil has no _efficient_
cause, for it consists in privation, as we shall see, namely, in that which
the efficient cause does not bring about. That is why the Schoolmen are
wont to call the cause of evil _deficient_.
21. Evil may be taken metaphysically, physically and morally. _Metaphysical
evil_ consists in mere imperfection, _physical evil_ in suffering, and
_moral evil_ in sin. Now although physical evil and moral evil be not
necessary, it is enough that by virtue of the eternal verities they be
possible. And as this vast Region of Verities contains all possibilities it
is necessary that there be an infinitude of possible worlds, that evil
enter into divers of them, and that even the best of all contain a measure
thereof. Thus has God been induced to permit evil.
22. But someone will say to me: why speak you to us of 'permitting'? Is it
not God that doeth the evil and that willeth it? Here it will be necessary
to explain what 'permission' is, so that it may be seen how this term is
not employed without reason. But before that one must explain the nature of
will, which has its own degrees. Taking it in the general sense, one may
say that _will_ consists in the inclination to do something in proportion
to the good it contains. This will is called _antecedent_ when it is
detached, and considers each good separately in the capacity of a good. In
this sense it may be said that God tends to all good, as good, _ad
perfectionem simpliciter simplicem_, to speak like the Schoolmen, and that
by an antecedent will. He is earnestly disposed to sanctify and to save all
men, to exclude sin, and to prevent damnation. It may even be said that
this will is efficacious _of itself (per se)_, that is, in such sort that
the effect would ensue if there were not some stronger reason to prevent
it: for this will does not pass into final exercise (_ad summum conatum_),
else it would never fail to produce its full effect, God being the [137]
master of all things. Success entire and infallible belongs only to the
_consequent will_, as it is called. This it is which is complete; and in
regard to it this rule obtains, that one never fails to do what one wills,
when one has the power. Now this consequent will, final and decisive,
results from the conflict of all the antecedent wills, of those which tend
towards good, even as of those which repel evil; and from the concurrence
of all these particular wills comes the total will. So in mechanics
compound movement results from all the tendencies that concur in one and
the same moving body, and satisfies each one equally, in so far as it is
possible to do all at one time. It is as if the moving body took equal
account of these tendencies, as I once showed in one of the Paris Journals
(7 Sept. 1693), when giving the general law of the compositions of
movement. In this sense also it may be said that the antecedent will is
efficacious in a sense and even effective with success.
23. Thence it follows that God wills _antecedently_ the good and
_consequently_ the best. And as for evil, God wills moral evil not at all,
and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely. Thus it is that
there is no absolute predestination to damnation; and one may say of
physical evil, that God wills it often as a penalty owing to guilt, and
often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater evils or to
obtain greater good. The penalty serves also for amendment and example.
Evil often serves to make us savour good the more; sometimes too it
contributes to a greater perfection in him who suffers it, as the seed that
one sows is subject to a kind of corruption before it can germinate: this
is a beautiful similitude, which Jesus Christ himself used.
24. Concerning sin or moral evil, although it happens very often that it
may serve as a means of obtaining good or of preventing another evil, it is
not this that renders it a sufficient object of the divine will or a
legitimate object of a created will. It must only be admitted or
_permitted_ in so far as it is considered to be a certain consequence of an
indispensable duty: as for instance if a man who was determined not to
permit another's sin were to fail of his own duty, or as if an officer on
guard at an important post were to leave it, especially in time of danger,
in order to prevent a quarrel in the town between two soldiers of the
garrison who wanted to kill each other.
25. The rule which states, _non esse facienda mala, ut eveniant bona_, and
which even forbids the permission of a moral evil with the end of [138]
obtaining a physical good, far from being violated, is here proved, and its
source and its reason are demonstrated. One will not approve the action of
a queen who, under the pretext of saving the State, commits or even permits
a crime. The crime is certain and the evil for the State is open to
question. Moreover, this manner of giving sanction to crimes, if it were
accepted, would be worse than a disruption of some one country, which is
liable enough to happen in any case, and would perchance happen all the
more by reason of such means chosen to prevent it. But in relation to God
nothing is open to question, nothing can be opposed to _the rule of the
best_, which suffers neither exception nor dispensation. It is in this
sense that God permits sin: for he would fail in what he owes to himself,
in what he owes to his wisdom, his goodness, his perfection, if he followed
not the grand result of all his tendencies to good, and if he chose not
that which is absolutely the best, notwithstanding the evil of guilt, which
is involved therein by the supreme necessity of the eternal verities. Hence
the conclusion that God wills all good _in himself antecedently_, that he
wills the best _consequently_ as an _end_, that he wills what is
indifferent, and physical evil, sometimes as a _means_, but that he will
only permit moral evil as the _sine quo non_ or as a hypothetical necessity
which connects it with the best. Therefore the _consequent will_ of God,
which has sin for its object, is only _permissive_.
26. It is again well to consider that moral evil is an evil so great only
because it is a source of physical evils, a source existing in one of the
most powerful of creatures, who is also most capable of causing those
evils. For an evil will is in its department what the evil principle of the
Manichaeans would be in the universe; and reason, which is an image of the
Divinity, provides for evil souls great means of causing much evil. One
single Caligula, one Nero, has caused more evil than an earthquake. An evil
man takes pleasure in causing suffering and destruction, and for that there
are only too many opportunities. But God being inclined to produce as much
good as possible, and having all the knowledge and all the power necessary
for that, it is impossible that in him there be fault, or guilt, or sin;
and when he permits sin, it is wisdom, it is virtue.
27. It is indeed beyond question that we must refrain from preventing the
sin of others when we cannot prevent their sin without sinning ourselves.
But someone will perhaps bring up the objection that it is God himself[139]
who acts and who effects all that is real in the sin of the creature. This
objection leads us to consider the _physical co-operation_ of God with the
creature, after we have examined the _moral co-operation_, which was the
more perplexing. Some have believed, with the celebrated Durand de
Saint-Pourçain and Cardinal Aureolus, the famous Schoolman, that the
co-operation of God with the creature (I mean the physical cooperation) is
only general and mediate, and that God creates substances and gives them
the force they need; and that thereafter he leaves them to themselves, and
does naught but conserve them, without aiding them in their actions. This
opinion has been refuted by the greater number of Scholastic theologians,
and it appears that in the past it met with disapproval in the writings of
Pelagius. Nevertheless a Capuchin named Louis Pereir of Dole, about the
year 1630, wrote a book expressly to revive it, at least in relation to
free actions. Some moderns incline thereto, and M. Bernier supports it in a
little book on freedom and freewill. But one cannot say in relation to God
what 'to conserve' is, without reverting to the general opinion. Also it
must be taken into account that the action of God in conserving should have
some reference to that which is conserved, according to what it is and to
the state wherein it is; thus his action cannot be general or
indeterminate. These generalities are abstractions not to be found in the
truth of individual things, and the conservation of a man standing is
different from the conservation of a man seated. This would not be so if
conservation consisted only in the act of preventing and warding off some
foreign cause which could destroy that which one wishes to conserve; as
often happens when men conserve something. But apart from the fact that we
are obliged ourselves sometimes to maintain that which we conserve, we must
bear in mind that conservation by God consists in the perpetual immediate
influence which the dependence of creatures demands. This dependence
attaches not only to the substance but also to the action, and one can
perhaps not explain it better than by saying, with theologians and
philosophers in general, that it is a continued creation.
28. The objection will be made that God therefore now creates man a sinner,
he that in the beginning created him innocent. But here it must be said,
with regard to the moral aspect, that God being supremely wise cannot fail
to observe certain laws, and to act according to the rules, as well [140]
physical as moral, that wisdom has made him choose. And the same reason
that has made him create man innocent, but liable to fall, makes him
re-create man when he falls; for God's knowledge causes the future to be
for him as the present, and prevents him from rescinding the resolutions
made.
29. As for physical co-operation, here one must consider the truth which
has made already so much stir in the Schools since St. Augustine declared
it, that evil is a privation of being, whereas the action of God tends to
the positive. This answer is accounted a quibble, and even something
chimerical in the minds of many people. But here is an instance somewhat
similar, which will serve to disabuse them.
30. The celebrated Kepler and M. Descartes (in his letters) after him have
spoken of the 'natural inertia of bodies'; and it is something which may be
regarded as a perfect image and even as a sample of the original limitation
of creatures, to show that privation constitutes the formal character of
the imperfections and disadvantages that are in substance as well as in its
actions. Let us suppose that the current of one and the same river carried
along with it various boats, which differ among themselves only in the
cargo, some being laden with wood, others with stone, and some more, the
others less. That being so, it will come about that the boats most heavily
laden will go more slowly than the others, provided it be assumed that the
wind or the oar, or some other similar means, assist them not at all. It is
not, properly speaking, weight which is the cause of this retardation,
since the boats are going down and not upwards; but it is the same cause
which also increases the weight in bodies that have greater density, which
are, that is to say, less porous and more charged with matter that is
proper to them: for the matter which passes through the pores, not
receiving the same movement, must not be taken into account. It is
therefore matter itself which originally is inclined to slowness or
privation of speed; not indeed of itself to lessen this speed, having once
received it, since that would be action, but to moderate by its receptivity
the effect of the impression when it is to receive it. Consequently, since
more matter is moved by the same force of the current when the boat is more
laden, it is necessary that it go more slowly; and experiments on the
impact of bodies, as well as reason, show that twice as much force [141]
must be employed to give equal speed to a body of the same matter but of
twice the size. But that indeed would not be necessary if the matter were
absolutely indifferent to repose and to movement, and if it had not this
natural inertia whereof we have just spoken to give it a kind of repugnance
to being moved. Let us now compare the force which the current exercises on
boats, and communicates to them, with the action of God, who produces and
conserves whatever is positive in creatures, and gives them perfection,
being and force: let us compare, I say, the inertia of matter with the
natural imperfection of creatures, and the slowness of the laden boat with
the defects to be found in the qualities and the action of the creature;
and we shall find that there is nothing so just as this comparison. The
current is the cause of the boat's movement, but not of its retardation;
God is the cause of perfection in the nature and the actions of the
creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the
cause of the defects there are in its action. Thus the Platonists, St.
Augustine and the Schoolmen were right to say that God is the cause of the
material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the formal
element, which lies in privation. Even so one may say that the current is
the cause of the material element of the retardation, but not of the
formal: that is, it is the cause of the boat's speed without being the
cause of the limits to this speed. And God is no more the cause of sin than
the river's current is the cause of the retardation of the boat. Force also
in relation to matter is as the spirit in relation to the flesh; the spirit
is willing and the flesh is weak, and spirits act...
_quantum non noxia corpora tardant._
31. There is, then, a wholly similar relation between such and such an
action of God, and such and such a passion or reception of the creature,
which in the ordinary course of things is perfected only in proportion to
its 'receptivity', such is the term used. And when it is said that the
creature depends upon God in so far as it exists and in so far as it acts,
and even that conservation is a continual creation, this is true in that
God gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in it is
positive, good and perfect, every perfect gift coming from the Father of
lights. The imperfections, on the other hand, and the defects in operations
spring from the original limitation that the creature could not but [142]
receive with the first beginning of its being, through the ideal reasons
which restrict it. For God could not give the creature all without making
of it a God; therefore there must needs be different degrees in the
perfection of things, and limitations also of every kind.
32. This consideration will serve also to satisfy some modern philosophers
who go so far as to say that God is the only agent. It is true that God is
the only one whose action is pure and without admixture of what is termed
'to suffer': but that does not preclude the creature's participation in
actions, since _the action of the creature_ is a modification of the
substance, flowing naturally from it and containing a variation not only in
the perfections that God has communicated to the creature, but also in the
limitations that the creature, being what it is, brings with it. Thus we
see that there is an actual distinction between the substance and its
modification or accidents, contrary to the opinion of some moderns and in
particular of the late Duke of Buckingham, who spoke of that in a little
_Discourse on Religion_ recently reprinted. Evil is therefore like
darkness, and not only ignorance but also error and malice consist formally
in a certain kind of privation. Here is an example of error which we have
already employed. I see a tower which from a distance appears round
although it is square. The thought that the tower is what it appears to be
flows naturally from that which I see; and when I dwell on this thought it
is an affirmation, it is a false judgement; but if I pursue the
examination, if some reflexion causes me to perceive that appearances
deceive me, lo and behold, I abandon my error. To abide in a certain place,
or not to go further, not to espy some landmark, these are privations.
33. It is the same in respect of malice or ill will. The will tends towards
good in general, it must strive after the perfection that befits us, and
the supreme perfection is in God. All pleasures have within themselves some
feeling of perfection. But when one is limited to the pleasures of the
senses, or to other pleasures to the detriment of greater good, as of
health, of virtue, of union with God, of felicity, it is in this privation
of a further aspiration that the defect consists. In general perfection is
positive, it is an absolute reality; defect is privative, it comes from
limitation and tends towards new privations. This saying is therefore as
true as it is ancient: _bonum ex causa integra, malum ex quolibet defectu_;
as also that which states: _malum causam habet non efficientem, sed [143]
deficientem_. And I hope that the meaning of these axioms will be better
apprehended after what I have just said.
34. The physical co-operation of God and of creatures with the will
contributes also to the difficulties existing in regard to freedom. I am of
opinion that our will is exempt not only from constraint but also from
necessity. Aristotle has already observed that there are two things in
freedom, to wit, spontaneity and choice, and therein lies our mastery over
our actions. When we act freely we are not being forced, as would happen if
we were pushed on to a precipice and thrown from top to bottom; and we are
not prevented from having the mind free when we deliberate, as would happen
if we were given a draught to deprive us of discernment. There is
_contingency_ in a thousand actions of Nature; but when there is no
judgement in him who acts there is no _freedom_. And if we had judgement
not accompanied by any inclination to act, our soul would be an
understanding without will.
35. It is not to be imagined, however, that our freedom consists in an
indetermination or an indifference of equipoise, as if one must needs be
inclined equally to the side of yes and of no and in the direction of
different courses, when there are several of them to take. This equipoise
in all directions is impossible: for if we were equally inclined towards
the courses A, B and C, we could not be equally inclined towards A and
towards not A. This equipoise is also absolutely contrary to experience,
and in scrutinizing oneself one will find that there has always been some
cause or reason inclining us towards the course taken, although very often
we be not aware of that which prompts us: just in the same way one is
hardly aware why, on issuing from a door, one has placed the right foot
before the left or the left before the right.
36. But let us pass to the difficulties. Philosophers agree to-day that the
truth of contingent futurities is determinate, that is to say that
contingent futurities are future, or that they will be, that they will
happen: for it is as sure that the future will be, as it is sure that the
past has been. It was true already a hundred years ago that I should write
to-day, as it will be true after a hundred years that I have written. Thus
the contingent is not, because it is future, any the less contingent; and
_determination_, which would be called certainty if it were known, is not
incompatible with contingency. Often the certain and the determinate are
taken as one thing, because a determinate truth is capable of being [144]
known: thus it may be said that determination is an objective certainty.
37. This determination comes from the very nature of truth, and cannot
injure freedom: but there are other determinations taken from elsewhere,
and in the first place from the foreknowledge of God, which many have held
to be contrary to freedom. They say that what is foreseen cannot fail to
exist, and they say so truly; but it follows not that what is foreseen is
necessary, for _necessary truth_ is that whereof the contrary is impossible
or implies contradiction. Now this truth which states that I shall write
tomorrow is not of that nature, it is not necessary. Yet supposing that God
foresees it, it is necessary that it come to pass; that is, the consequence
is necessary, namely, that it exist, since it has been foreseen; for God is
infallible. This is what is termed a _hypothetical necessity_. But our
concern is not this necessity: it is an _absolute necessity_ that is
required, to be able to say that an action is necessary, that it is not
contingent, that it is not the effect of a free choice. Besides it is very
easily seen that foreknowledge in itself adds nothing to the determination
of the truth of contingent futurities, save that this determination is
known: and this does not augment the determination or the 'futurition' (as
it is termed) of these events, that whereon we agreed at the outset.
38. This answer is doubtless very correct. It is agreed that foreknowledge
in itself does not make truth more determinate; truth is foreseen because
it is determinate, because it is true; but it is not true because it is
foreseen: and therein the knowledge of the future has nothing that is not
also in the knowledge of the past or of the present. But here is what an
opponent will be able to say: I grant you that foreknowledge in itself does
not make truth more determinate, but it is the cause of the foreknowledge
that makes it so. For it needs must be that the foreknowledge of God have
its foundation in the nature of things, and this foundation, making the
truth _predeterminate_, will prevent it from being contingent and free.
39. It is this difficulty that has caused two parties to spring up, one of
the _predeterminators_, the other of the supporters of _mediate knowledge_.
The Dominicans and the Augustinians are for predetermination, the
Franciscans and the modern Jesuits on the other hand are for mediate
knowledge. These two parties appeared towards the middle of the sixteenth
century and a little later. Molina himself, who is perhaps one of the [145]
first, with Fonseca, to have systematized this point, and from whom the
others derived their name of Molinists, says in the book that he wrote on
the reconciliation of freewill with grace, about the year 1570, that the
Spanish doctors (he means principally the Thomists), who had been writing
then for twenty years, finding no other way to explain how God could have a
certain knowledge of contingent futurities, had introduced predetermination
as being necessary to free actions.
40. As for himself, he thought to have found another way. He considers that
there are three objects of divine knowledge, the possibles, the actual
events and the conditional events that would happen in consequence of a
certain condition if it were translated into action. The knowledge of
possibilities is what is called the 'knowledge of mere intelligence'; that
of events occurring actually in the progress of the universe is called the
'knowledge of intuition'. And as there is a kind of mean between the merely
possible and the pure and absolute event, to wit, the conditional event, it
can be said also, according to Molina, that there is a mediate knowledge
between that of intuition and that of intelligence. Instance is given of
the famous example of David asking the divine oracle whether the
inhabitants of the town of Keilah, where he designed to shut himself in,
would deliver him to Saul, supposing that Saul should besiege the town. God
answered yes; whereupon David took a different course. Now some advocates
of this mediate knowledge are of opinion that God, foreseeing what men
would do of their own accord, supposing they were placed in such and such
circumstances, and knowing that they would make ill use of their free will,
decrees to refuse them grace and favourable circumstances. And he may
justly so decree, since in any case these circumstances and these aids
would not have served them aught. But Molina contents himself with finding
therein generally a reason for the decrees of God, founded on what the free
creature would do in such and such circumstances.
41. I will not enter into all the detail of this controversy; it will
suffice for me to give one instance. Certain older writers, not acceptable
to St. Augustine and his first disciples, appear to have had ideas somewhat
approaching those of Molina. The Thomists and those who call themselves
disciples of St. Augustine (but whom their opponents call Jansenists)
combat this doctrine on philosophical and theological grounds. Some [146]
maintain that mediate knowledge must be included in the knowledge of mere
intelligence. But the principal objection is aimed at the foundation of
this knowledge. For what foundation can God have for seeing what the people
of Keilah would do? A simple contingent and free act has nothing in itself
to yield a principle of certainty, unless one look upon it as predetermined
by the decrees of God, and by the causes that are dependent upon them.
Consequently the difficulty existing in actual free actions will exist also
in conditional free actions, that is to say, God will know them only under
the condition of their causes and of his decrees, which are the first
causes of things: and it will not be possible to separate such actions from
those causes so as to know a contingent event in a way that is independent
of the knowledge of its causes. Therefore all must of necessity be traced
back to the predetermination of God's decrees, and this mediate knowledge
(so it will be said) will offer no remedy. The theologians who profess to
be adherents of St. Augustine claim also that the system of the Molinists
would discover the source of God's grace in the good qualities of man, and
this they deem an infringement of God's honour and contrary to St. Paul's
teaching.
42. It would be long and wearisome to enter here into the replies and
rejoinders coming from one side and the other, and it will suffice for me
to explain how I conceive that there is truth on both sides. For this
result I resort to my principle of an infinitude of possible worlds,
represented in the region of eternal verities, that is, in the object of
the divine intelligence, where all conditional futurities must be
comprised. For the case of the siege of Keilah forms part of a possible
world, _which differs from ours only in all that is connected with this
hypothesis_, and the idea of this possible world represents that which
would happen in this case. Thus we have a principle for the certain
knowledge of contingent futurities, whether they happen actually or must
happen in a certain case. For in the region of the possibles they are
represented as they are, namely, as free contingencies. Therefore neither
the foreknowledge of contingent futurities nor the foundation for the
certainty of this foreknowledge should cause us perplexity or seem to
prejudice freedom. And though it were true and possible that contingent
futurities consisting in free actions of reasonable creatures were entirely
independent of the decrees of God and of external causes, there would [147]
still be means of foreseeing them; for God would see them as they are in
the region of the possibles, before he decrees to admit them into
existence.
43. But if the foreknowledge of God has nothing to do with the dependence
or independence of our free actions, it is not so with the foreordinance of
God, his decrees, and the sequence of causes which, as I believe, always
contribute to the determination of the will. And if I am for the Molinists
in the first point, I am for the predeterminators in the second, provided
always that predetermination be taken as not necessitating. In a word, I am
of opinion that the will is always more inclined towards the course it
adopts, but that it is never bound by the necessity to adopt it. That it
will adopt this course is certain, but it is not necessary. The case
corresponds to that of the famous saying, _Astra inclinant, non
necessitant_, although here the similarity is not complete. For the event
towards which the stars tend (to speak with the common herd, as if there
were some foundation for astrology) does not always come to pass, whereas
the course towards which the will is more inclined never fails to be
adopted. Moreover the stars would form only a part of the inclinations that
co-operate in the event, but when one speaks of the greater inclination of
the will, one speaks of the result of all the inclinations. It is almost as
we have spoken above of the consequent will in God, which results from all
the antecedent wills.
44. Nevertheless, objective certainty or determination does not bring about
the necessity of the determinate truth. All philosophers acknowledge this,
asserting that the truth of contingent futurities is determinate, and that
nevertheless they remain contingent. The thing indeed would imply no
contradiction in itself if the effect did not follow; and therein lies
contingency. The better to understand this point, we must take into account
that there are two great principles of our arguments. The one is the
principle of _contradiction_, stating that of two contradictory
propositions the one is true, the other false; the other principle is that
of the _determinant reason_: it states that nothing ever comes to pass
without there being a cause or at least a reason determining it, that is,
something to give an _a priori_ reason why it is existent rather than
non-existent, and in this wise rather than in any other. This great
principle holds for all events, and a contrary instance will never be
supplied: and although more often than not we are insufficiently [148]
acquainted with these determinant reasons, we perceive nevertheless that
there are such. Were it not for this great principle we could never prove
the existence of God, and we should lose an infinitude of very just and
very profitable arguments whereof it is the foundation; moreover, it
suffers no exception, for otherwise its force would be weakened. Besides,
nothing is so weak as those systems where all is unsteady and full of
exceptions. That fault cannot be laid to the charge of the system I
approve, where everything happens in accordance with general rules that at
most are mutually restrictive.
45. We must therefore not imagine with some Schoolmen, whose ideas tend
towards the chimerical, that free contingent futurities have the privilege
of exemption from this general rule of the nature of things. There is
always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice, and for
the maintenance of freedom for the will it suffices that this reason should
incline without necessitating. That is also the opinion of all the
ancients, of Plato, of Aristotle, of St. Augustine. The will is never
prompted to action save by the representation of the good, which prevails
over the opposite representations. This is admitted even in relation to
God, the good angels and the souls in bliss: and it is acknowledged that
they are none the less free in consequence of that. God fails not to choose
the best, but he is not constrained so to do: nay, more, there is no
necessity in the object of God's choice, for another sequence of things is
equally possible. For that very reason the choice is free and independent
of necessity, because it is made between several possibles, and the will is
determined only by the preponderating goodness of the object. This is
therefore not a defect where God and the saints are concerned: on the
contrary, it would be a great defect, or rather a manifest absurdity, were
it otherwise, even in men here on earth, and if they were capable of acting
without any inclining reason. Of such absurdity no example will ever be
found; and even supposing one takes a certain course out of caprice, to
demonstrate one's freedom, the pleasure or advantage one thinks to find in
this conceit is one of the reasons tending towards it.
46. There is therefore a freedom of contingency or, in a way, of
indifference, provided that by 'indifference' is understood that nothing
necessitates us to one course or the other; but there is never any
_indifference of equipoise_, that is, where all is completely even on [149]
both sides, without any inclination towards either. Innumerable great and
small movements, internal and external, co-operate with us, for the most
part unperceived by us. And I have already said that when one leaves a room
there are such and such reasons determining us to put the one foot first,
without pausing to reflect. For there is not everywhere a slave, as in
Trimalchio's house in Petronius, to cry to us: the right foot first. All
that we have just said agrees entirely also with the maxims of the
philosophers, who teach that a cause cannot act without having a
disposition towards action. It is this disposition which contains a
predetermination, whether the doer have received it from without, or have
had it in consequence of his own antecedent character.
47. Thus we have no need to resort, in company with some new Thomists, to a
new immediate predetermination by God, such as may cause the free creature
to abandon his indifference, and to a decree of God for predetermining the
creature, making it possible for God to know what the creature will do: for
it suffices that the creature be predetermined by its preceding state,
which inclines it to one course more than to the other. Moreover, all these
connexions of the actions of the creature and of all creatures were
represented in the divine understanding, and known to God through the
knowledge of mere intelligence, before he had decreed to give them
existence. Thus we see that, in order to account for the foreknowledge of
God, one may dispense with both the mediate knowledge of the Molinists and
the predetermination which a Bañez or an Alvarez (writers otherwise of
great profundity) have taught.
48. By this false idea of an indifference of equipoise the Molinists were
much embarrassed. They were asked not only how it was possible to know in
what direction a cause absolutely indeterminate would be determined, but
also how it was possible that there should finally result therefrom a
determination for which there is no source: to say with Molina that it is
the privilege of the free cause is to say nothing, but simply to grant that
cause the privilege of being chimerical. It is pleasing to see their
harassed efforts to emerge from a labyrinth whence there is absolutely no
means of egress. Some teach that the will, before it is determined
formally, must be determined virtually, in order to emerge from its state
of equipoise; and Father Louis of Dole, in his book on the _Co-operation of
God_, quotes Molinists who attempt to take refuge in this expedient: [150]
for they are compelled to acknowledge that the cause must needs be disposed
to act. But they gain nothing, they only defer the difficulty: for they
will still be asked how the free cause comes to be determined virtually.
They will therefore never extricate themselves without acknowledging that
there is a predetermination in the preceding state of the free creature,
which inclines it to be determined.
49. In consequence of this, the case also of Buridan's ass between two
meadows, impelled equally towards both of them, is a fiction that cannot
occur in the universe, in the order of Nature, although M. Bayle be of
another opinion. It is true that, if the case were possible, one must say
that the ass would starve himself to death: but fundamentally the question
deals in the impossible, unless it be that God bring the thing about
expressly. For the universe cannot be halved by a plane drawn through the
middle of the ass, which is cut vertically through its length, so that all
is equal and alike on both sides, in the manner wherein an ellipse, and
every plane figure of the number of those I term 'ambidexter', can be thus
halved, by any straight line passing through its centre. Neither the parts
of the universe nor the viscera of the animal are alike nor are they evenly
placed on both sides of this vertical plane. There will therefore always be
many things in the ass and outside the ass, although they be not apparent
to us, which will determine him to go on one side rather than the other.
And although man is free, and the ass is not, nevertheless for the same
reason it must be true that in man likewise the case of a perfect equipoise
between two courses is impossible. Furthermore it is true that an angel, or
God certainly, could always account for the course man has adopted, by
assigning a cause or a predisposing reason which has actually induced him
to adopt it: yet this reason would often be complex and incomprehensible to
ourselves, because the concatenation of causes linked together is very
long.
50. Hence it is that the reason M. Descartes has advanced to prove the
independence of our free actions, by what he terms an intense inward
sensation, has no force. We cannot properly speaking be sensible of our
independence, and we are not aware always of the causes, often
imperceptible, whereon our resolution depends. It is as though the magnetic
needle took pleasure in turning towards the north: for it would think that
it was turning independently of any other cause, not being aware of the
imperceptible movements of the magnetic matter. Nevertheless we shall [151]
see later in what sense it is quite true that the human soul is altogether
its own natural principle in relation to its actions, dependent upon itself
and independent of all other creatures.
51. As for _volition_ itself, to say that it is an object of free will is
incorrect. We will to act, strictly speaking, and we do not will to will;
else we could still say that we will to have the will to will, and that
would go on to infinity. Besides, we do not always follow the latest
judgement of practical understanding when we resolve to will; but we always
follow, in our willing, the result of all the inclinations that come from
the direction both of reasons and passions, and this often happens without
an express judgement of the understanding.
52. All is therefore certain and determined beforehand in man, as
everywhere else, and the human soul is a kind of _spiritual automaton_,
although contingent actions in general and free action in particular are
not on that account necessary with an absolute necessity, which would be
truly incompatible with contingency. Thus neither futurition in itself,
certain as it is, nor the infallible prevision of God, nor the
predetermination either of causes or of God's decrees destroys this
contingency and this freedom. That is acknowledged in respect of futurition
and prevision, as has already been set forth. Since, moreover, God's decree
consists solely in the resolution he forms, after having compared all
possible worlds, to choose that one which is the best, and bring it into
existence together with all that this world contains, by means of the
all-powerful word _Fiat_, it is plain to see that this decree changes
nothing in the constitution of things: God leaves them just as they were in
the state of mere possibility, that is, changing nothing either in their
essence or nature, or even in their accidents, which are represented
perfectly already in the idea of this possible world. Thus that which is
contingent and free remains no less so under the decrees of God than under
his prevision.