3. If the Will of all Intelligents is always in harmony with the
Intellect, then I affirm that there is not, and never has been, any such
thing as sin, or ill desert, in the universe. What more can be said of
God, or of any being ever so pure, than that he has always done what his
Intellect affirmed to be best? What if the devil, and all creatures
called sinners, had always done the same thing? Where is the conceivable
ground for the imputation of moral guilt to them?
4. If all acts of Will are always in perfect harmony with the
Intelligence, and in this sense, "as the greatest apparent good," then,
when the Intellect affirms absolutely that there can be no ground of
preference between two objects, there can be no choice between them. But
we are, in fact, putting forth every day just such acts of Will,
selecting one object in distinction from another, when the Intellect
affirms their perfect equality, or affirms absolutely, that there is and
can be no perceived ground of preference between them. I receive a
letter, I will suppose, from a friend, informing me that he has just
taken from a bank two notes, perfectly new and of the same value, that
one now lies in the east and the other in the west corner of his drawer,
that I may have one and only one of them, the one that I shall name by
return of mail, and that I must designate one or the other, or have
neither. Here are present to my Intelligence two objects absolutely
equal. Their location is a matter of indifference, equally absolute. Now
if as the proposition "the Will is _always_ as the greatest apparent
good," affirms, I cannot select one object in distinction from another,
without a perceived ground for such selection, I could not possibly, in
the case supposed, say which bill I would have. Yet I make the selection
without the least conceivable embarrassment. I might mention numberless
cases, of daily occurrence, of a nature precisely similar. Every child
that ever played at "odd or even," knows perfectly the possibility of
selecting between objects which are, to the Intelligence, absolutely
equal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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