will we should have the same sensations of experience as we have when we
think that we are free. Assume, for the sake of argument, that God so
ordered the laws of the union between soul and body that all the modalities
of the soul, without a single exception, are of necessity linked together
with the interposition of the modalities of the brain. You will then
understand that nothing will happen to us except that of which we are
conscious: there will be in our soul the same sequence of thoughts from the
perception of objects of the senses, which is its first step, up to the
most definite volitions, which are its final step. There will be in this
sequence the consciousness of ideas, that of affirmations, that of
irresolutions, that of velleities and that of volitions. For whether the
act of willing be impressed upon us by an external cause or we bring it
about ourselves, it will be equally true that we will, and that we feel
that we will. Moreover, as this external cause can blend as much pleasure
as it will with the volition which it impresses upon us, we shall be able
to feel at times that the acts of our will please us infinitely, and that
they lead us according to the bent of our strongest inclinations. We shall
feel no constraint; you know the maxim: _voluntas non potest cogi_. Do[309]
you not clearly understand that a weather-vane, always having communicated
to it simultaneously (in such a way, however, that priority of nature or,
if one will, a real momentary priority, should attach to the desire for
motion) movement towards a certain point on the horizon, and the wish to
turn in that direction, would be persuaded that it moved of itself to
fulfil the desires which it conceived? I assume that it would not know that
there were winds, or that an external cause changed everything
simultaneously, both its situation and its desires. That is the state we
are in by our nature: we know not whether an invisible cause makes us pass
sufficiently from one thought to another. It is therefore natural that men
are persuaded that they determine their own acts. But it remains to be
discovered whether they are mistaken in that, as in countless other things
they affirm by a kind of instinct and without having made use of
philosophic meditation. Since therefore there are two hypotheses as to what
takes place in man: the one that he is only a passive subject, the other
that he has active virtues, one cannot in reason prefer the second to t