ns arising out of corporeal
representations. This produces the same effect and the same appearance as
if the one depended immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a
physical influence. Properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that
the soul represents the bodies which encompass it. The same thing must
apply to all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one
upon another. For each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion
to its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of
things, as God in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with
another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in
each. (Withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures,
because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is
done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of
these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other,
perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) Thus it is
we attribute _action_ to the one, and _passion_ to the other.

67. But after all, whatsoever dependence be conceived in voluntary actions,
and even though there were an absolute and mathematical necessity (which
there is not) it would not follow that there would not be a sufficient
degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just and reasonable. It
is true that generally we speak as though the necessity of the action put
an end to all merit and all demerit, all justification for praise and
blame, for reward and punishment: but it must be admitted that this
conclusion is not entirely correct. I am very far from sharing the opinions
of Bradwardine, Wyclif, Hobbes and Spinoza, who advocate, so it seems,[160]
this entirely mathematical necessity, which I think I have adequately
refuted, and perhaps more clearly than is customary. Yet one must always
bear testimony to the truth and not impute to a dogma anything that does
not result from it. Moreover, these arguments prove too much, since they
would prove just as much against hypothetical necessity, and would justify
the lazy sophism. For the absolute necessity of the sequence of causes
would in this matter add nothing to the infallible certainty of a
hypothetical necessity.

68. In the first place, therefore, it must be agreed that it is permitted
to kill a madman when one cannot by other means defend oneself. It will be
granted also that it is permi