Fourth Meditation: What Is Freedom? 177
ness of things. If not for some always more original orienta-
tion toward an always more final end, the will would never act
in regard to finite objects at all; immanent desires are always
in a sense deferred toward some more remote, more transcen-
dent purpose. All concretely limited aspirations of the will are
sustained within formally limitless aspirations of the will. In
the end, it turns out, the only objects of desire that are not re-
ducible to other, more general objects of desire, and that are
thus desirable entirely in and of themselves, are certain univer-
sal, unconditional, and exalted ideals or (as they are tradition-
ally called) transcendentals: that is, the intrinsic perfections of
being in its fullness-according to certain conventional reck-
onings, being and unity, truth, goodness, and beauty-which
metaphysical tradition also says are convertible with one an -
other, and ultimately with reality as such. One may not be, in
any given instant, immediately conscious that one's rational
appetites have been excited by these transcendental ends; but
they are the constant and pervasive preoccupation of the ratio-
nal will in the deepest springs of its actions.
This is why, inevitably, true freedom is contingent upon
true knowledge and true sanity of mind. To the very degree
that either of these is deficient, freedom is absent. And with
freedom goes culpability. No mind that possesses so much as
a glimmer of a consciousness of reality is wholly lacking in
liberty; but, by the same token, no mind save one possessing
absolutely undiminished consciousness of reality is wholly
free. This is why we rightly distinguish between acts performed
compos mentis and acts performed non compos mentis, and
why we determine someone's mental competency or incom-
petency in large part from how clearly he or she understands
the difference between actions that serve his or her good and
actions that do not. We know that the willing of happiness is