Moral System
Section 1 - VI.
Promulgation of the moral law
127. As long as we are dealing with the way in which our mind comes to possess simple ideas, that is, the essences of things, we find ourselves in the field of necessity. Ideas are presented to us as external and non-interchangeable. The intellect grasps them, and delights in their quasi-divinity. But there comes a time when we turn in on ourselves and think about the intellectual lights we have received. We ask ourselves if various properties have to be distinguished from one another in the lights we behold, or if relationships are to be found between these lights. More insistently we ask whether these relationships must be found between the lights and the things the lights make known. At this point, error can creep in.
128. Up to this moment, we have sensed things as a whole. Now we have to analyse this whole and advert to that which was first known without being adverted to. We now have to form judgments for ourselves not about the whole, but about its parts, or about the individual aspects of the whole which we feel and know. The moral order and freedom begin here; it is here that we can surrender to the attraction of the senses by judging wrongly in accordance with their inclinations, or remain above their seductions by affirming to ourselves what is true, reaching right conclusions, and assenting to whatever our unspoilt faculty of knowledge first suggested to us.
129. Only simplicity is necessary for us to judge uprightly. It is simplicity, stripped of all bias, that abandons itself to the truth which as it were comes to meet us. But in order to judge wrongly, it is absolutely necessary for us to contradict nature, to act artfully and violently. In order to be good, we need only to be passive as it were before what is true, and follow nature; to be evil, it is necessary to set in motion that sad activity which brings us into collision with what is true, that is, with something within us which remains unmoved and of itself impregnable.
130. We can conclude, therefore, that with the simple presentation of an object to our mind, the eternal law of justice is proclaimed in us. As soon as we know the object and begin to reflect upon it, we are immediately conscious of the need to possess it as it is by acknowledging and judging it as such. There is no doubt that the unchangeableness of the essence that represents the thing to us has a kind of eternal force and absolute necessity inherent in its own simple nature. We feel that we have no power over this essence, which is what it is independently of us. If we affirm the contrary, we err inevitably and act evilly by hating the nature of the thing and the truth. We are to blame, therefore, for an intrinsically false action. Cicero was well aware of this when he wrote:
If we have learned anything at all about philosophy, we must have a firm, deep conviction that, even if we were able to hide what we do from all the gods and from all mankind, we should nevertheless abstain from all avarice, injustice, lust and intemperance.(90)
131. The first law, therefore, is made by the being itself of things, independently of us, and is promulgated by the simple presence of beings to our understanding. In presenting themselves to us, they show us that it is not within our power to destroy, change or alter them in accordance with what is useful or pleasurable to us. We are indeed free to adapt ourselves or not to the entity of things, but if we attempt to alter this entity to what we wish to see, we immediately feel that we are acting falsely and deficiently. We feel that we are the authors of evil.
Notes
(90) De Officiis, 3: 8.