Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence. Samuel Pufendorf

or to call him back from the same. But, if we confirm or drag back a man who has already determined upon a destination, or one who is already equipped for action, we are said to be inciting and deterring. And although there is by no means the force of obligation attached to cases of advice and incitation, and so he who lends an ear to them, since he admits them freely, is altogether exercising his own action and not that of another; since, nevertheless, they have great force, especially when dexterously applied, to make others undertake or cease from an action, or to be confirmed or weakened in regard to their undertakings, this is the reason why the effect of an action is in part imputed also against advisers and inciters.

5. Means are employed by an agent to attain a certain end, when the will is unable to achieve that end directly by its own motion, so that some end may, as it were, approach the agent, or the agent approach some end. The following rule must be observed with regard <70> to the end: He who justifies the end is regarded also as justifying those means without which the end cannot be obtained, for otherwise nothing would have been done. From this it follows that, if the means be illicit or impossible, I am not held to that end which cannot be obtained without them. And from this it follows that evil ought not to be done in order that good may result, because no one is regarded as being bound to that good which it is not given him to attain without wrongdoing.

      Now among natural means the principal one is the faculty of locomotion, whereby a man is able to move his body from one place to another, to make a partial change in the position of definite members, and to impress movement upon things. This faculty slavishly obeys the will, that is to say, it can never refuse to do its commands, but rather, as far as in it lies, it performs them, unless either the members themselves are restrained by some intrinsic or extrinsic impediment, or the object is not so proportioned that movement can be impressed upon it by that faculty.

6. The second book will be the place for treating of the emotions, the intellect, and the will. Here must be noted, concerning the will, merely that it is called habit, in so far as it is conformed and enabled to handle expeditiously the moral object, under difficulty of abstention from, or vehement inclination toward, that object. Immediately upon the presentation of the object the will so disposed is swept away toward it with so great an impetus that it can scarcely abstain from it. Also this habit is directed principally towards any moral actions, and this for the reason that good and evil are measured principally according to the free choice of the agent’s action, and this free choice is commonly regarded to have been scarcely complete, unless one has acted in accordance with one’s habit. And so it is that he, and he only, who acts well by habit, receives the name of a good man, and he who acts ill by habit, the name of a bad man; not the man who once or twice by some chance impulse, or because he could not do otherwise conveniently, has done some good, or who through thoughtlessness, or the violence of emotion, has done some evil.¹ Moreover, in a special way there are listed under the designation of virtues those habits by which the mind is so ordered that it acts, in regard to the objects which move it, according to the dictates of sound reason. Reason prescribes, furthermore, that the sight neither of good nor of evil, when brought before the mind, should disturb and shake it out of its tranquillity;² just as, on the contrary, we say that he is suffering from a fault whose mind is so affected by the appearance of an object, be it harsh or pleasant, that his tranquillity is, as it were, agitated by violent waves and broken up.

      Obligation, law, and authority require a more detailed discussion. <71>