Chapter XII: Humanity is ordered for the best when most free.

If the principle of freedom is explained, it will be apparent that the human race is ordered for the best when it is most free. Observe, then, those words which are on the lips of many but in the minds of few, that the basic principle of our freedom is freedom of the will. Men come even to the point of saying that free will is free judgment in matters of will, and they say true; but the import of their words is far from them, as from our logicians who work daily with certain propositions used as examples in books of logic; for instance, that “a triangle has three angles equaling two right angles.”

Judgment, I affirm, stands between apprehension and desire; for first a thing is apprehended; then the apprehension is adjudged good or bad; and finally he who so judges pursues or avoids it. So if judgment entirely controls desire, and is hindered by it in no way, judgment is free; but if desire influences judgment by hindering it in some manner, judgment cannot be free, for it acts not of itself, but is dragged captive by another. Thus brutes cannot have free judgment, for their judgments are always hindered by appetite. And thus intellectual substances whose wills are immutable, and disembodied souls who have departed in peace, do not lose freedom of the will by reason of this immutability, but retain it in greatest perfection and power.

With this in mind we may understand that this freedom, or basic principle of our freedom, is, as I said, the greatest gift bestowed by God upon human nature, for through it we attain to joy here as men, and to blessedness there as gods. If this is so, who will not admit that mankind is best ordered when able to use this principle most effectively? But the race is most free under a Monarch. Wherefore let us know that the Philosopher holds in his book concerning simple Being, that whatever exists for its own sake and not for the sake of another is free. For whatever exists for the sake of another is conditioned by that other, as a road by its terminus. Only if a Monarch rules can the human race exist for its own sake; only if a Monarch rules can the crooked policies be straightened, namely democracies, oligarchies, and tyrannies which force mankind into slavery, as he sees who goes among them, and under which kings, aristocrats called the best men, and zealots of popular liberty play at politics. For since a Monarch loves men greatly, a point already touched upon, he desires all men to do good, which cannot be among players at crooked policies. Whence the Philosopher in his Politics says, “Under bad government the good man is a bad citizen; but under upright government ‘good man’ and ‘good citizen’ have the same meaning.” Upright governments have liberty as their aim, that men may live for themselves; not citizens for the sake of the consuls, nor a people for a king, but conversely, consuls for the sake of the citizens, and a king for his people. As governments are not all established for the sake of laws, but laws for governments, so those living under the laws are not ordered for the sake of the legislator, but rather he for them, as the Philosopher maintains in what he has left us concerning the present matter. Wherefore it is also evident that although consul or king may be lord of others with respect to means of governing, they are servants with respect to the end of governing; and without doubt the Monarch must be held the chief servant of all. Now it becomes clear that a Monarch is conditioned in the making of laws by his previously determined end. Therefore the human race existing under a Monarch is best ordered, and from this it follows that a Monarchy is essential to the well-being of the world.