In regard to the Eternal Mind, the only standard of perfection in organization that we can conceive of is revealed in our own mind. Every thing in our own minds--every thing around us--every thing we have known in past experience, is designed to produce the most possible happiness with the least possible evil. We can not conceive of any being as wise, or just, or good, but as he acts to promote that end.
A mind organized like our own, with faculties infinitely enlarged, who always has and always will sustain a controlling purpose to act right, is the only idea we can have of an all-perfect Creator.
But on the subject of the perfect action of finite minds it is perceived that reference must always be had to _voluntary power_ and its limitations. We have shown that the implanted susceptibility, called the _sense of justice_, demands that the rewards and penalties for good and evil have reference to _the knowledge and power_ of a voluntary agent; that is to say, it is contrary to our moral nature voluntarily to inflict penalties for wrong action on a being who either has no power to know what right is, or no power to do it. We revolt from such inflictions with instinctive abhorrence, as unfit and contrary to the design of all things.
So, in forming our judgment of the Creator, when we regard him as perfectly just, the idea implies that he will never _voluntarily_ inflict evil for wrong action on beings who have not the knowledge or power to act right.
Here we are again forced to the assumption of some _eternal nature of things_ independent of the Creator's will, by which ignorant and helpless creatures are exposed to suffering from wrong action when they have no power of _any_ kind to act right.
For we see such suffering actually does exist, and there are but two suppositions possible. The one is, that it results from the Creator's _voluntary_ acts, and the other, that it is inherent in that eternal nature of things which the Creator can no more alter than he can destroy his own necessary and eternal existence.
In judging of the perfect action of finite minds, we are obliged to regard the question in two relations. In the primary relation we have reference to actions which, in all the infinite relations of a vast and eternal system of free agents, are fitted to secure the most possible good with the least possible evil. In this relation, so far as we can judge by experience and reason, no finite being ever did or ever can _act perfectly_ from the first to the last of its volitions. In this relation, every human being is certainly, necessarily, and inevitably imperfect in action.