But we have still stronger evidence. We have seen all the causes that experience has taught as the leading to the wrong action of mind. These are necessarily excluded from our conceptions of the Creator. The Eternal Mind can not err for want of knowledge, nor for want of habits of right action, nor for want of teachers and educators, nor for want of those social influences which generate and sustain a right governing purpose; for an infinite mind, that never had a beginning, can not have these modes of experience which appertain to new-born and finite creatures.
Again: we have seen that it is one of the implanted principles of reason that "no rational mind will choose evil without hope of compensating good." Such is the eternal system of the universe, as we learn it by the light of reason, that the highest possible happiness to each individual mind and to the whole commonwealth is promoted by the right action of every mind in that system. This, of necessity, is seen and felt by the All-creating and Eternal Mind, and to suppose that, with this knowledge, he would ever choose wrong is to suppose that he would choose pure evil, and this is contrary to an intuitive truth. It is to suppose the Creator would do what he has formed our minds to believe to be impossible in _any_ rational mind. It is to suppose that the Creator would do that which, if done by human beings, marks them as insane.
We are now prepared to inquire in regard to what constitutes _a perfect mind_. This question relates, in the first place, to the perfect constitutional organization of mind, and, in the next place, to the perfect action of mind.
In regard to a finite mind, when we inquire as to its perfection in organization, we are necessarily restricted to the question of the object or end for which it is made. Any contrivance in mind or matter is perfect when it is so formed that, _if worked according to its design_, it completely fulfills the end for which it is made, so that there is no way in which it could be improved.
It is here claimed, then, that by the light of reason alone we first gain the object for which mind is made, and then arrive at the conclusion that the mind of man is perfect in construction, because, if worked according to its design, it would completely fulfill the end for which it is made, so that there is no conceivable way in which it could be improved. This position can not be controverted except by presenting evidence that some other organization of the mind would produce, in an eternal and infinite system, more good with less evil than the present one.