§33It 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.

§34The 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.

§35It 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.

§36But 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.

§37This 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.

§38This 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.

§39It 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.

§40As 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.

§41I 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.