hat
is, to faith and to charity, without always having need of motives.

2. Now the truths of reason are of two kinds: the one kind is of those
called the 'Eternal Verities', which are altogether necessary, so that the
opposite implies contradiction. Such are the truths whose necessity is
logical, metaphysical or geometrical, which one cannot deny without being
led into absurdities. There are others which may be called _positive_,
because they are the laws which it has pleased God to give to Nature, or
because they depend upon those. We learn them either by experience, that
is, _a posteriori_, or by reason and _a priori_, that is, by considerations
of the fitness of things which have caused their choice. This fitness of
things has also its rules and reasons, but it is the free choice of God,
and not a geometrical necessity, which causes preference for what is
fitting and brings it into existence. Thus one may say that physical
necessity is founded on moral necessity, that is, on the wise one's choice
which is worthy of his wisdom; and that both of these ought to be
distinguished from geometrical necessity. It is this physical necessity
that makes order in Nature and lies in the rules of motion and in some
other general laws which it pleased God to lay down for things when he gave
them being. It is therefore true that God gave such laws not without
reason, for he chooses nothing from caprice and as though by chance or in
pure indifference; but the general reasons of good and of order, which have
prompted him to the choice, may be overcome in some cases by stronger
reasons of a superior order.

3. Thus it is made clear that God can exempt creatures from the laws he has
prescribed for them, and produce in them that which their nature does not
bear by performing a miracle. When they have risen to perfections and
faculties nobler than those whereto they can by their nature attain, the
Schoolmen call this faculty an 'Obediential Power', that is to say, a [75]
power which the thing acquires by obeying the command of him who can give
that which the thing has not. The Schoolmen, however, usually give
instances of this power which to me appear impossible: they maintain, for
example, that God can give the creature the faculty to create. It may be
that there are miracles which God performs through the ministry of angels,
where the laws of Nature are not violated, any more than when men assist
Nature by art, the skill of angels dif