12.  The learned author of this work on the origin of evil, proposing to explain the origin of moral evil in the fifth chapter, which makes up half of the whole book, considers that it is altogether different from that of physical evil, which lies in the inevitable imperfection of creatures.  For, as we shall see presently, it appears to him that moral evil comes rather from that which he calls a perfection, which the creature has in common, according to him, with the Creator, that is to say, in the power of choosing without any motive and without any final or impelling cause.  It is a very great paradox to assert that the greatest imperfection, namely sin, springs from perfection itself.  But it is no less a paradox to present as a perfection the thing which is the least reasonable in the world, the advantage whereof would consist in being privileged against reason.  And that, after all, rather than pointing out the source of the evil, would be to contend that it has none.  For if the will makes its resolve without the existence of anything, either in the person who chooses or in the object which is chosen, to prompt it to the choice, there will be neither cause nor reason for this election; and as moral evil consists in the wrong choice, that is admitting that moral evil has no source at all.  Thus in the rules of good metaphysics there would have to be no moral evil in Nature; and also for the same reason there would be no moral good either, and all morality would be destroyed.  But we must listen to our gifted author, from whom the subtlety of an opinion maintained by famous philosophers among the Schoolmen, and the adornments that he has added thereto himself by his[417] wit and his eloquence, have hidden the great disadvantages contained therein.  In setting forth the position reached in the controversy, he divides the writers into two parties.  The one sort, he says, are content to say that the freedom of the will is exempt from outward constraint; and the other sort maintain that it is also exempt from inward necessity.  But this exposition does not suffice, unless one distinguish the necessity that is absolute and contrary to morality from hypothetical necessity and moral necessity, as I have already explained in many places.

13.  The first section of this chapter is to indicate the nature of choice.  The author sets forth in the first place the opinion of those who believe that the will is prompted by the judgement of the understanding, or by anterior inclinations of the desires, to resolve upon the course that it adopts.  But he confuses these authors with those who assert that the will is prompted to its resolution by an absolute necessity, and who maintain that the person who wills has no power over his volitions:  that is, he confuses a Thomist with a Spinozist.  He makes use of the admissions and the odious declarations of Mr. Hobbes and his like, to lay them to the charge of those who are infinitely far removed from them, and who take