Abstract
Universal reason is the Wisdom of God Himself. By means of it, we all have intercourse with God. Truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, each is the same for all intelligent beings as it is for God Himself. Truth and Order: what they are, and what must be done to avoid error and sin. God is essentially just. He loves His creatures in proportion as they are lovable, as they resemble Him. In order to be happy we must be perfect. Virtue, or man’s perfection consists in submission to the immutable Order, never in following the order of nature. The error of some ancient philosophers on this subject, based on their ignorance of the simplicity and immutability of the Divine.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Malebranche, N. (1993). Chapter One. In: Treatise on Ethics (1684). International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’histoire Des Idées, vol 133. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2480-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2480-5_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5094-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-2480-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive