sts and
the predetermination which a Banez or an Alvarez (writers otherwise of
great profundity) have taught.

48. By this false idea of an indifference of equipoise the Molinists were
much embarrassed. They were asked not only how it was possible to know in
what direction a cause absolutely indeterminate would be determined, but
also how it was possible that there should finally result therefrom a
determination for which there is no source: to say with Molina that it is
the privilege of the free cause is to say nothing, but simply to grant that
cause the privilege of being chimerical. It is pleasing to see their
harassed efforts to emerge from a labyrinth whence there is absolutely no
means of egress. Some teach that the will, before it is determined
formally, must be determined virtually, in order to emerge from its state
of equipoise; and Father Louis of Dole, in his book on the _Co-operation of
God_, quotes Molinists who attempt to take refuge in this expedient: [150]
for they are compelled to acknowledge that the cause must needs be disposed
to act. But they gain nothing, they only defer the difficulty: for they
will still be asked how the free cause comes to be determined virtually.
They will therefore never extricate themselves without acknowledging that
there is a predetermination in the preceding state of the free creature,
which inclines it to be determined.

49. In consequence of this, the case also of Buridan's ass between two
meadows, impelled equally towards both of them, is a fiction that cannot
occur in the universe, in the order of Nature, although M. Bayle be of
another opinion. It is true that, if the case were possible, one must say
that the ass would starve himself to death: but fundamentally the question
deals in the impossible, unless it be that God bring the thing about
expressly. For the universe cannot be halved by a plane drawn through the
middle of the ass, which is cut vertically through its length, so that all
is equal and alike on both sides, in the manner wherein an ellipse, and
every plane figure of the number of those I term 'ambidexter', can be thus
halved, by any straight line passing through its centre. Neither the parts
of the universe nor the viscera of the animal are alike nor are they evenly
placed on both sides of this vertical plane. There will therefore always be
many things in the ass and outside the ass, although they be not apparent
to us, which will determine him to go on