140. The divine will may be referred to external objects, which, being finite, can be combined in different manners, and the existence or non-existence of these combinations depends on the end proposed by the agent which produces or modifies them. The will of God exerted on these objects is free; and to say that he has no necessity of doing this or that is to deny nothing, but to affirm a perfection, namely, the faculty of willing or not willing, or willing in different manners, objects which, on account of their finite nature, cannot bind the infinite will. 141. Hence all the reality contained in general ideas, whether indeterminate or intuitive, that is not contradictory, is affirmed of the absolutely infinite being. As to individual realities, it is evident that those which are finite cannot be affirmed of the infinite being without contradiction. The proposition: the infinite being is the corporeal universe, is equivalent to this: the infinite being is an essentially finite being. The same contradiction will be met with in every proposition where the subject is the infinite being, and the predicate an individual reality distinct from the infinite being. This remark will suffice for the present: they will be more clearly understood when we come to treat of the multitude of substances, in refuting the error of pantheists. CHAPTER XVIII. INTELLIGENCE AND THE ABSOLUTELY INFINITE BEING. 142. The infinite being is not a vague object presented in the general idea of being, but is possessed of true properties which, without ceasing to be real, are identified with its infinite essence. A being which is not something, of which some property cannot be affirmed, is a dead being, which we conceive only under the general idea of thing, and is presented to us as something which cannot be realized. Such is not the conception which mankind form of the infinite being; the idea of activity has always been associated with the idea of God: this is not a general, but a fixed and determinate activity; internally, it is the activity of intelligence; externally, the activity which produces beings. 143. The idea of activity in general does not exclude all imperfection: activity to do evil is an imperfect activity: the activity by which some sensible beings act on others, is subject to the conditions of motion and extension, and is, consequently, not exempt from imperfection. Pure, internal activity, considered in itself, involves no imperfection; this is intellectual activity. It is an inoffensive activity, and of itself does no harm; it is an immaculate faculty, and of itself is never stained.