66.  One may however give a true and philosophic sense to this mutual dependence which we suppose between the soul and the body.  It is that the one of these two substances depends upon the other ideally, in so far as the reason of that which is done in the one can be furnished by that which is in the other.  This had already happened when God ordered beforehand the harmony that there would be between them.  Even so would that [159] automaton, that should fulfil the servant’s function, depend upon me ideally, in virtue of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me at the right moment all through the morrow.  The knowledge of my future intentions would have actuated this great craftsman, who would accordingly have fashioned the automaton:  my influence would be objective, and his physical.  For in so far as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God has accommodated the body to the soul, and has arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to execute its orders.  And in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its perceptions are confused, God has accommodated the soul to the body, in such sort that the soul is swayed by the passions arising out of corporeal representations.  This produces the same effect and the same appearance as if the one depended immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a physical influence.  Properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that the soul represents the bodies which encompass it.  The same thing must apply to all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one upon another.  For each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion to its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of things, as God in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in each. (Withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures, because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other, perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) Thus it is we attribute action to the one, and passion to the other.

67.  But after all, whatsoever dependence be conceived in voluntary actions, and even though there were an absolute and mathematical necessity (which there is not) it would not follow that there would not be a sufficient degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just and reasonable.  It is true that generally we speak as though the necessity of the action put an end to all merit and all demerit, all justification for praise and blame, for reward and punishment:  but it must be admitted that this conclusion is not entirely correct.  I am very far from sharing the opinions of Bradwardine, Wyclif, Hobbes and Spinoza, who advocate, so it seems,[160] this entirely mathematical