Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/100

incompatibility. And, as it would be an absurdity to suppose, on the one side, that God cannot be free if he is God, and that he cannot be God if he is free; and on the other, that man cannot attain perfection without losing his liberty, nor be free without renouncing perfection, it follows that the idea of liberty that we have just examined is altogether false, contradictory, and absurd.

The error that we have just exposed consists in placing freedom in the faculty of choice, when it really rests in the faculty of will, which supposes the faculty of understanding. Every being endowed with understanding and will is free, and his liberty is not a distinct thing from his will and his understanding, but the two united. When we affirm of a being that he has will and understanding, and of another being that he is free, we assert with regard to both the same thing expressed in two different ways.

If liberty consists in the faculties of will and understanding, then perfect liberty consists in a perfect will and understanding. These are the attributes of God alone, from which it follows, as a necessary inference, that God alone is perfectly free.

Again, if liberty consists in the faculties of understanding and will, then man is free, because he is endowed with will and intelligence; but he is not perfectly free, as he is not endowed with an understanding and will infinite and perfect.

The imperfection of his understanding is, that it is limited on the one hand, and on the other subject to error. The imperfection of his will is, that he does not desire all that he ought to wish for, and that he may be importuned and conquered by evil. From whence it