still has an indirect power over them in two ways.  During the continuance of the affection (e.g., fear) it is able to arrest the bodily movements to which the affection tends (flight), though not the emotion itself, and, in the intervals of quiet, it can take measures to render a new attack of the passion less dangerous.  Instead of enlisting one passion against another, a plan which would mean only an appearance of freedom, but in fact a continuance in bondage, the soul should fight with its own weapons, with fixed maxims (judicia), based on certain knowledge of good and evil.  The will conquers the emotions by means of principles, by clear and distinct knowledge, which sees through and corrects the false values ascribed to things by the excitement of the passions.  Besides this negative requirement, “subjection of the passions,” Descartes’ contributions to ethics—­in the letters to Princess Elizabeth on human happiness, and to Queen Christina on love and the highest good—­were inconsiderable.  Wisdom is the carrying out of that which has been seen to be best, virtue is steadfastness, sin inconstancy therein.  The goal of human endeavor is peace of conscience, which is attained only through the determination to be virtuous, i.e., to live in harmony with self.

Besides its ethical mission, the will has allotted to it the theoretical function of affirmation and negation, i.e., of judgment.  If God in his veracity and goodness has bestowed on man the power to know truth, how is misuse of this power, how is error possible?  Single sensations and ideas cannot be false, but only judgments—­the reference of ideas to objects.  Judgment or assent is a matter of the will; so that when it makes erroneous affirmations or negations, when it prefers the false judgment to the true, it alone is guilty.  Our understanding is limited, our will unlimited; the latter reaches further than the former, and can assent to a judgment even before its constituent parts have attained the requisite degree of clearness.  False judgment is prejudgment, for which we can hold neither God nor our own nature responsible.  The possibility of error, as well as the possibility of avoiding error, resides in the will.  This has the power to postpone its assent or dissent, to hold back its decision until the ideas have become entirely clear and distinct.  The supreme perfection is the libertas non errandi.  Thus knowledge itself becomes a moral function; the true and the good are in the last analysis identical.  The contradiction with which Descartes has been charged, that he makes volition and cognition reciprocally determinative, that he bases moral goodness on the clearness of ideas and vice versa, does not exist.  We must distinguish between a theoretical and a practical stadium in the will; it is true of the latter that it depends on knowledge of the right, of the former that the knowledge of the right is dependent on it.  In order to the possibility of moral action the will must conform to clear judgment; in order to the production of the latter the will must be moral.  It is the unit-soul, which first, by freely avoiding overhasty judgment, cognizes the truth, to exemplify it later in moral conduct.