136. Active sensibility, or the faculty of perceiving, presents two characteristics which must be defined. There are in sensation two things: the affection caused in the sensitive being by the sensible object, and the internal representation of the sensible being. The first is purely passive, and supposes the possibility of being affected by an object, and, consequently, of being subject to change. This cannot be attributed to the infinite being: to deny it is to affirm immutability, or the necessity of remaining always in the same state. The second is a sort of inferior order of cognition, by which the sensitive being perceives the sensible object. The representation of all objects must necessarily be found in the infinite being, consequently all that is intuitively perceptive in the sensitive faculty must be contained in the perception of the infinite being; that is to say, all that sensibility presents to us of external objects, all that it transfers to our intuition of external existence, must be contained in the representation which the infinite intelligence has within itself. Man cannot know under what form objects are presented to the intuition of the infinite being; but it is certain that all the _truth_ contained in sensitive representation is presented to this intuition. 137. Intelligence, or the perception of objects without the forms of sensibility, implies the perception of beings and of their relations, which is something positive. In us it is often accompanied by the negative circumstance, of the absence of determinate objects to which the general conception may be referred. The infinite being sees in a single intuition all that exists and all that can exist, and contains all that is positive in intelligence, without what is negative, which is an imperfection. 138. It is evident that will must be affirmed of God; for we cannot deny the infinite being that internal, spontaneous activity which is called _to will_, and the nature of which involves no imperfection. 139. The will of God, although one and most simple, is distinguished into free and necessary, according to the objects to which it is referred. This gives rise to various negative propositions, which it is well to examine. We say: God cannot will moral evil; this proposition, apparently negative, is, logically considered, affirmative. God cannot will moral evil, because his will is invariably fixed on good, on that sublime type of all holiness which he contemplates in his infinite essence. The impotence of moral evil is in God an infinite perfection of his infinite holiness.