In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, whatever it may be, to institute the good, any more than it belongs to it to institute the true and the beautiful. I have no idea of the will of God except by my own, to be sure with the differences that separate what is finite from what is infinite. Now, I cannot by my will found the least truth. Is it because my will is limited? No; were it armed with infinite power, it would, in this respect, be equally impotent. Such is the nature of my will that, in doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the opposite; and that is not an accidental character of the will, it is its fundamental character; if, then, it is supposed that truth, or that first part of it which is called justice, has been established as it is by an act of volition, human or Divine, it must be acknowledged that another act might have established it otherwise, and made what is now just unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mobility is contrary to the nature of justice and truth. In fact, moral truths are as absolute as metaphysical truths. God cannot make effects exist without a cause, phenomena without a substance; neither can he make it evil to respect his word, to love truth, to repress one's passions. The principles of ethics are immutable axioms like those of geometry. Of moral laws especially must be said what Montesquieu said of all laws in general,--they are necessary relations that are derived from the nature of things. Let us suppose that the good and the just are derived from the divine will; on the divine will obligation will also rest. But can any will whatever be the foundation of obligation? The divine will is the will of an omnipotent being, and I am a feeble being. This relation of a feeble being to an omnipotent being, does not contain in itself any moral idea. One may be forced to obey the stronger, but he is not obligated to do it. The sovereign orders of the will of God, if his will could for a moment be separated from his other attributes, would not contain the least ray of justice; and, consequently, there would not descend into my soul the least shade of obligation. One will exclaim,--It is not the arbitrary will of God that makes the foundation of obligation and justice; it is his just will. Very well. Every thing changes then. It is not the pure will of God that obligates us, it is the motive itself that determines his will, that is to say, the justice passed into his will. The distinction between the just and the unjust is not then the work of his will. One of two things. Either we found ethics on the will of God alone, and then the distinction between good and evil, just and unjust, is gratuitous, and moral obligation does not exist; or you give authority to the will of God by justice, which, in your hypothesis, must have received from the will of God its authority, which is a _petitio principii_.