Acts cannot please or displease God, except as conformed to the eternal law; therefore, to judge of the goodness or evil of acts by their relation to the pleasure or displeasure of God, is to judge of them by their conformity to the eternal law.
From this it may be inferred that, although an act conformed to reason, one agreeing with the eternal law, and one displeasing to God, express different aspects of an idea, they all mean the same when used in explaining the foundations of the moral order.
207. The rules of the eternal law do not depend on the free will of God, since, in that case, God could make good evil, and evil good. The eternal law cannot be any thing else than the eternal reason, or the representation of the moral order in the divine intellect. Morality thus seems, according to our mode of conception, to precede its representation; that is to say, morality seems to be represented in the divine intellect because it is; but not that it is because it is represented. In the moral order we come to something resembling metaphysical and geometrical science. Geometrical truths are eternal, inasmuch as they are represented in the eternal reason; and this representation supposes an intrinsic and necessary truth in them, since the representation would otherwise be false. As this truth must have some eternal foundation,[96] and this foundation cannot be in any finite being, it must be sought for in the essentially infinite being, which contains the reason of all things. The infinite intellect represents the truth, and is, therefore, true; but this truth is itself founded on the essence of the infinite being which knows it.
208. Moral truths are not distinguished in this respect from metaphysical; their origin is in God, moral science cannot be atheistic. Why are some things represented in God as good and others as evil? To ask the reason of this is like asking why triangles are not represented as circles, and circles as triangles. If there is an intrinsic necessity, either we can assign no reason for it or we must at any rate come to a reason which can be explained by no other reason. It will in any case, be necessary for us to come to a point where we can only say: It is so. Any further satisfaction, which we might desire, is beyond our reach, as we do not intuitively see the infinite essence which contains the first and ultimate reason of all things.
209. It is necessary first to suppose good and evil before things can be represented as such, or even conceived as so represented. What is a good thing? If we say it is being represented as good in the divine mind, the thing defined is contained in the definition; the difficulty still remains: what is it to be represented as good?
Goodness cannot consist in the simple representation, so that whatever is represented in God is good; for then every thing would be good, as every thing is represented in God.
Therefore, in order that a thing may be good, it must not only be represented, but represented under such or such a character which makes it good; but still the difficulty remains: what is this character?
210. Let us make these ideas clearer by comparing a metaphysical with a moral truth. All the diameters of the same circle are equal; this truth does not depend on any particular circle, it is founded on the essence of all circles; this essence is in turn represented eternally in the infinite essence, where with the plenitude of being, is contained the representation and knowledge of all the finite participations in which the wisdom and power of God may be exercised. All the participations are subject to the principle of contradiction, in none of them can being cease to exclude not-being, or not-being to exclude being; hence proceeds the necessity of all the properties and relations, without which the principle of contradiction cannot subsist; among these is the equality of all the diameters of the same circle.
211. These considerations suggest the question: is it possible to explain the moral order like the metaphysical and mathematical, by showing it contained in the principle of contradiction?