ications
of this active principle which is within us. No agent is capable of acting
without being _predisposed_ to what the action demands; and the reasons or
inclinations derived from good or evil are the dispositions that enable the
soul to decide between various courses. One will have it that the will is
alone active and supreme, and one is wont to imagine it to be like a queen
seated on her throne, whose minister of state is the understanding, while
the passions are her courtiers or favourite ladies, who by their influence
often prevail over the counsel of her ministers. One will have it that the
understanding speaks only at this queen's order; that she can vacillate
between the arguments of the minister and the suggestions of the
favourites, even rejecting both, making them keep silence or speak, and
giving them audience or not as seems good to her. But it is a
personification or mythology somewhat ill-conceived. If the will is to
judge, or take cognizance of the reasons and inclinations which the
understanding or the senses offer it, it will need another understanding in
itself, to understand what it is offered. The truth is that the soul, or
the thinking substance, understands the reasons and feels the inclinations,
and decides according to the predominance of the representations modifying
its active force, in order to shape the action. I have no need here to
apply my system of Pre-established Harmony, which shows our independence to
the best advantage and frees us from the physical influence of objects. For
what I have just said is sufficient to answer the objection. Our [422]
author, even though he admits with people in general this physical
influence of objects upon us, observes nevertheless with much perspicacity
that the body or the objects of the senses do not even give us our ideas,
much less the active force of our soul, and that they serve only to draw
out that which is within us. This is much in the spirit of M. Descartes'
belief that the soul, not being able to give force to the body, gives it at
least some direction. It is a mean between one side and the other, between
physical influence and Pre-established Harmony.

17. Fifthly, the objection is made that, according to my opinion, sin would
neither be censured nor punished because of its deserts, but because the
censure and the chastisement serve to prevent it another time; whereas men
demand something more, namely, satisfaction for the crime, eve