Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/129

MAN. 107 judgment. If God in his veracity and goodness has be- stowed on man the power to know truth, how is misuse of this power, how is error possible ? Singl^_sensat_ioiis_and ideas ^annotjeJ[alseJbut only judgments — the reference of ideas to objects. Judgment or assent is a matter of the will ; so that when it makes erroneous affirmations or nega- tions, when it prefers the false judgment to the true, it alone is guilty. Our understanding is limited, our will unlimited ; the latter reaches further than the former, and can assent to a judgment even before its constituent parts have attained the requisite degree of clearness. False judgment is prejudgment, for which we can hold neither God nor our own nature responsible. The possibility of error, as well as the possibility of avoiding error, resides in the will. This has the power to postpone its assent or dissent, to hold back its decision until the ideas have be- come entirely clear and distinct. The supreme perfection is the libertas non errandi. Thus knowledge itself be- comes a moral function ; the true and the good are in the last analysis identical. The contradiction with which Descartes has been charged, that he makes volition and cognition reciprocally determinative, that he bases moral goodness on the clearness of ideas and vice versa, does not exist. We must distinguish between a theoretical and a practical stadium in the will ; it is true of the latter that it depends on knowledge of the right, of the former that the knowledge of the right is dependent on it. In order to the possibility of moral action the will must conform to clear judgment; in order to the production of the latter the will must be moral. It is the unit-soul, which first, by freely avoiding overhasty judgment, cognizes the truth, to exemplify it later in moral conduct.