ensured for an evil one, if the thanks or
blame redounds to fortune or hazard? I think that one is more worthy of
praise when one owes the action to one's good qualities, and the more
culpable in proportion as one has been impelled to it by one's evil
qualities. To attempt to assess actions without weighing the qualities
whence they spring is to talk at random and to put an imaginary indefinable
something in the place of causes. Thus, if this chance or this indefinable
something were the cause of our actions, to the exclusion of our natural or
acquired qualities, of our inclinations, of our habits, it would not be
possible to set one's hopes upon anything depending upon the resolve of
others, since it would not be possible to fix something indefinite, or to
conjecture into what roadstead the uncertain weather of an extravagant
indifference will drive the vessel of the will.

20. But setting aside advantages and disadvantages, let us see how our
learned author will justify the hypothesis from which he promises us so
much good. He imagines that it is only God and the free creatures who are
active in the true sense, and that in order to be active one must be
determined by oneself only. Now that which is determined by itself must not
be determined by objects, and consequently the free substance, in so far as
it is free, must be indifferent with regard to objects, and emerge from
this indifference only by its own choice, which shall render the object
pleasing to it. But almost all the stages of this argument have their
stumbling-blocks. Not only the free creatures, but also all the other
substances and natures composed of substances, are active. Beasts are not
free, and yet all the same they have active souls, unless one assume, with
the Cartesians, that they are mere machines. Moreover, it is not necessary
that in order to be active one should be determined only by oneself, since
a thing may receive direction without receiving force. So it is that the
horse is controlled by the rider and the vessel is steered by the helm; and
M. Descartes' belief was that our body, having force in itself, receives
only some direction from the soul. Thus an active thing may receive from
outside some determination or direction, capable of changing that [427]
direction which it would take of itself. Finally, even though an active
substance is determined only by itself, it does not follow that it is not
moved by objects: for it is the represe