a free command of his mind he speaks the things which when sober he
wishes he had left unsaid. Thus the madman, the chatterer, the boy, and
others of the same kind, all believe that they speak by a free command
of the mind, whilst, in truth, they have no power to restrain the
impulse which they have to speak, so that experience itself, no less
than reason, clearly teaches that men believe themselves to be free
simply because they are conscious of their own actions, knowing nothing
of the causes by which they are determined. It[19] teaches, too, that
the decrees of the mind are nothing but the appetites themselves, which
differ, therefore, according to the different temper of the body. For
every man determines all things from his emotion; those who are agitated
by contrary emotions do not know what they want, whilst those who are
agitated by no emotion are easily driven hither and thither.

All this plainly shows that the decree of the mind, the appetite, and
determination of the body are coincident in Nature, or rather that they
are one and the same thing, which, when it is considered under the
attribute of thought and manifested by that, is called a decree, and
when it is considered under the attribute of extension and is deduced
from the laws of motion and rest, is called a determination.

This, however, will be better understood as we go on, for there is
another thing which I wish to be observed here--that we cannot by a
mental decree do a thing unless we recollect it. We cannot speak a word,
for instance, unless we recollect it. But it is not in the free power of
the mind either to recollect a thing or to forget it. It is believed,
therefore, that the power of the mind extends only thus far--that from a
mental decree we can speak or be silent about a thing only when we
recollect it. But when we dream that we speak, we believe that we do so
from a free decree of the mind; and yet we do not speak, or, if we do,
it is the result of a spontaneous motion of the body. We dream, again,
that we are concealing things, and that we do this by virtue of a decree
of the mind like that by which, when awake, we are silent about things
we know. We dream, again, that from a decree of the mind, we do some
things which we should not dare to do when awake. And I should like to
know, therefore, whether there are two kinds of decrees in the
mind--one belonging to dreams and the other free. If this be too great
nonsense, we must necessari