is the necessary effect of the uncertainty in which we find
ourselves with reference to the results of our actions. As soon as we
believe ourselves certain of these results, we necessarily decide; and
then we act necessarily according as we shall have judged right or
wrong. Our judgments, true or false, are not free; they are necessarily
determined by ideas which we have received, or which our mind has
formed. Man is not free in his choice; he is evidently compelled to
choose what he judges the most useful or the most agreeable for himself.
When he suspends his choice, he is not more free; he is forced to
suspend it till he knows or believes he knows the qualities of the
objects presented to him, or until he has weighed the consequence of his
actions. Man, you will say, decides every moment on actions which he
knows will endanger him; man kills himself sometimes, then he is free. I
deny it! Has man the ability to reason correctly or incorrectly? Do not
his reason and his wisdom depend either upon opinions that he has
formed, or upon his mental constitution? As neither the one nor the
other depends upon his will, they can not in any wise prove his liberty.

If I make the wager to do or not to do a thing, am I not free? Does it
not depend upon me to do or not to do it? No; I will answer you, the
desire to win the wager will necessarily determine you to do or not to
do the thing in question. "But if I consent to lose the wager?" Then the
desire to prove to me that you are free will have become to you a
stronger motive than the desire to win the wager; and this motive will
necessarily have determined you to do or not to do what was understood
between us. But you will say, "I feel myself free." It is an illusion
which may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, which, lighting
on the shaft of a heavy wagon, applauded itself as driver of the vehicle
which carried it. Man who believes himself free, is a fly who believes
himself the master-motor in the machine of the universe, while he
himself, without his own volition, is carried on by it. The feeling
which makes us believe that we are free to do or not to do a thing, is
but a pure illusion. When we come to the veritable principle of our
actions, we will find that they are nothing but the necessary results of
our wills and of our desires, which are never within our power. You
believe yourselves free because you do as you choose; but are you really
free to will or not to wi