DISCOURSE ONMETAPHYSICS 603
of the essence, thought and will of God and of all the ideas included in Him. Hence, it
can be said that God alone is our immediate object outside us, and that it is in Him that
we see all things. For example, when we see the sun and the stars, it is God who gave us
them and preserves their ideas in us, and in fact determines us to think of them at the time
at which our senses are disposed in a particular way, through His ordinary concurrence
and in accordance with the laws established by Him. God is the sun and light of souls,
“the light enlightening every man born into the world.” It is not just today that people are
of this opinion. After Holy Scripture and the Fathers—always more for Plato than for
Aristotle—I recall noticing once that in the time of the Scholastics some believed that
God was the light of the soul and, in their way of speaking, “the active intellect of the
rational soul.” The Averroists gave this a bad meaning, but others such as, I think,
William of St. Amour, doctor of the Sorbonne, and several mystical theologians, took it
in a manner worthy of God and capable of raising the soul to the knowledge of its good.
- NEVERTHELESSWETHINKDIRECTLY BYOUROWNIDEAS
ANDNOT BYTHOSE OFGOD
Nevertheless I am not of the opinion of some able philosophers who seem to main-
tain that our very ideas are in God, and not at all in us. In my opinion, this comes
about because they have still not pondered enough what we have just explained con-
cerning substances, nor the entire extent and independence of our souls (which
means that they include everything happening to them and express the essence of
God, and with Him all possible and actual beings, like an effect its cause). Also, it is
inconceivable that I should think by means of the thoughts of someone else. It is
very necessary that an effect should express its cause and it is also very necessary
that the soul should be actually affected in a particular way when it thinks of some-
thing and that it should have in advance, not only the passive power of being affected
in this way, something already determined, but also an active power, in virtue of
which there has always been in its nature the marks of the future production of that
thought and dispositions to produce it when the time came. All this already includes
the idea contained in that thought.
- HOWGODINCLINESWITHOUTNECESSITATING; WEHAV E
NORIGHT TOCOMPLAIN, ANDWEMUSTNOTASKWHYJUDAS
SINSSINCE THISFREEACTIONISINCLUDED INHISNOTION,
ONLYWHYJUDAS THESINNERISADMITTED TOEXISTENCE
INPREFERENCE TOOTHERPOSSIBLEPERSONS. THEORIGIN
OFEVILCOMESFROM THIS, THEORIGINALIMPERFECTION
BEFORESIN, AND THEDEGREES OFGRACE
Concerning the action of God on the human will, there are many rather difficult ques-
tions that would take time to pursue here. Nevertheless, in outline, this is what can be
said. When God concurs in our actions, He ordinarily does no more than follow the laws
of nature He has established, i.e. He preserves and continually produces our nature, so
that the thoughts spontaneously and naturally or freely happen to us in the order carried
by the notion of our individual substance, within which they could have been foreseen
from all eternity. Moreover, in virtue of the decree that the will should always tend