is quite evident that that
does not interfere with freedom, any more than could a friend who gives
counsel and furnishes motives. Thus Herr Wittich has not supplied an answer
to the question, any more than M. Bayle, and recourse to God is of no avail
here.

299. But let me give another much more reasonable passage from the same M.
Bayle, where he disputes with greater force the so-called lively sense of
freedom, which according to the Cartesians is a proof of freedom. His words
are indeed full of wit, and worthy of consideration, and occur in the
_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, ch. 140, p. 761
_seqq._). Here they are: 'By the clear and distinct sense we have of our
existence we do not discern whether we exist through ourselves or derive
our being from another. We discern that only by reflexion, that is, through
meditation upon our powerlessness in the matter of conserving ourselves as
much as we would, and of freeing ourselves from dependence upon the beings
that surround us, etc. It is indeed certain that the pagans (the same must
be said of the Socinians, since they deny the creation) never attained[308]
to the knowledge of that true dogma that we were created from nothing, and
that we are derived from nothingness at every moment of our continuance.
They therefore thought erroneously that all substances in the universe
exist of themselves and can never be reduced to nothing, and that thus they
depend upon no other thing save in respect of their modifications, which
are liable to be destroyed by the action of an external cause. Does not
this error spring from the fact that we are unconscious of the creative
action which conserves us, and that we are only conscious of our existence?
That we are conscious of it, I say, in such a way that we should for ever
remain ignorant of the cause of our being if other knowledge did not aid
us? Let us say also, that the clear and distinct sense we have of the acts
of our will cannot make us discern whether we give them ourselves to
ourselves or receive them from that same cause which gives us existence. We
must have recourse to reflexion or to meditation in order to effect this
discrimination. Now I assert that one can never by purely philosophical
meditations arrive at an established certainty that we are the efficient
cause of our volitions: for every person who makes due investigation will
recognize clearly, that if we were only passive subjects with regard to