If will as a cause _per se_, were isolated and in no relation whatever, there could not be any ground of any knowledge whatever, respecting future volitions. But will is not thus isolated. On the contrary, it forms a unity with the sensitivity and the reason. Reason reveals _what ought to be done_, on the basis of necessary and unchangeable truth. The sensitivity reveals what is most desirable or pleasurable, on the ground of personal experience. Now although it is granted that will can act without deriving a reason or inducement of action from the reason and the sensitivity, still the instances in which it does so act, are so rare and trifling, that they may be thrown out of the account. We may therefore safely assume as a general law, that the will determines according to reasons and inducements drawn from the reason and the sensitivity. This law is not by its very definition, and by the very nature of the subject to which it relates, a necessary law--but a law revealed in our consciousness as one to which the will, in the exercise of its freedom, does submit itself. In the harmony and perfection of our being, the reason and the sensitivity perfectly accord. In obeying the one or the other, the will obeys both. With regard to perfect beings, therefore, we can calculate with certainty as to their volitions under any given circumstances. Whatever is commanded by reason, whatever appears attractive to the pure sensitivity, will be obeyed and followed. But what kind of certainty is this? It is not absolute certainty, because it is supposable that the will which obeys may not obey, for it has power not to obey. Nor is it _physical_ certainty, for it does not relate to a physical cause, nor to the connexion between volition and its effects, but to the connexion between will and its volitions. Nor again can we, strictly speaking, call it a _conditional_ certainty; because the will, as a power _per se_, is under no conditions as to the production of its volitions. To say that the volitions will be in accordance with the reason and pure sensitivity, if the will continue to obey the reason and pure sensitivity, is merely saying that the volitions will be right if the willing power put forth right volitions. What kind of certainty is it, then? I reply, it is a certainty altogether peculiar,--a certainty based upon the relative state of the reason and the sensitivity, and their unity with the will; and as the commands of reason in relation to conduct have received the name of _moral_[7] laws, simply because they have this relation,--and as the sensitivity, when harmonizing with the reason, is thence called morally pure, because attracting to the same conduct which the reason commands,--this certainty may fitly be called _moral certainty_. The name, however, does not mark _degree_. Does this certainty possess degrees? It does. With respect to the volitions of God, we have the highest degree of moral certainty,--an infinite moral certainty. He,