entirely and solely that they should fight. That would not
exculpate them, they would only follow their passion, they would be unaware
that they conformed to the will of their sovereign: but he would be in
truth the moral cause of their encounter, and he would not more entirely
wish it supposing he were to inspire them with the desire or to give them
the order for it. Imagine to yourself two princes each of whom wishes his
eldest son to poison himself. One employs constraint, the other contents
himself with secretly causing a grief that he knows will be sufficient to
induce his son to poison himself. Will you be doubtful whether the will of
the latter is less complete than the will of the former? M. Descartes is
therefore assuming an unreal fact and does not at all solve the
difficulty.'

164. One must confess that M. Descartes speaks somewhat crudely of the will
of God in regard to evil in saying not only that God knew that our free
will would determine us toward some particular thing, but also _that he
also wished it_, albeit he did not will to constrain the will thereto. He
speaks no less harshly in the eighth letter of the same volume, saying that
not the slightest thought enters into the mind of a man which God does not
_will_, and has not willed from all eternity, to enter there. Calvin never
said anything harsher; and all that can only be excused if it is to be
understood of a permissive will. M. Descartes' solution amounts to the
distinction between the will expressed in the sign and the will expressive
of the good pleasure (_inter voluntatem signi et beneplaciti_) which the
moderns have taken from the Schoolmen as regards the terms, but to which
they have given a meaning not usual among the ancients. It is true that God
may command something and yet not will that it be done, as when he
commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son: he willed the obedience, and he did
not will the action. But when God commands the virtuous action and [226]
forbids the sin, he wills indeed that which he ordains, but it is only by
an antecedent will, as I have explained more than once.

165. M. Descartes' comparison is therefore not satisfactory; but it may be
made so. One must make some change in the facts, inventing some reason to
oblige the prince to cause or permit the two enemies to meet. They must,
for instance, be together in the army or in other obligatory functions, a
circumstance the prince himself cannot hinder without enda