call speaking (in the widest sense of the word) every physical
phenomenon which accompanies and expresses a certain state of the soul;
thus, in this acceptation, all the sympathetic movements are speaking,
including those which accompany the simple affections of the animal
sensibility.

The aspect, even, under which the animals present themselves, can be
speaking, as soon as they outwardly show their inward dispositions. But,
with them, it is nature alone which speaks, and NOT LIBERTY. By the
permanent configuration of animals through their fixed and architectonic
features, nature expresses the aim she proposed in creating them; by
their mimic traits she expresses the want awakened and the want
satisfied. Necessity reigns in the animal as well as in the plant,
without meeting the obstacle of a person. The animals have no
individuality farther than each of them is a specimen by itself of a
general type of nature, and the aspect under which they present
themselves at such or such an instant of their duration is only a
particular example of the accomplishment of the views of nature under
determined natural conditions.

To take the word in a more restricted sense, the configuration of man
alone is speaking, and it is itself so only in those of the phenomena
that accompany and express the state of its moral sensibility.

I say it is only in this sort of phenomena; for, in all the others, man
is in the same rank as the rest of sensible beings. By the permanent
configuration of man, by his architectonic features, nature only
expresses, just as in the animals and other organic beings, her own
intention. It is true the intention of nature may go here much further,
and the means she employs to reach her end may offer in their combination
more of art and complication; but all that ought to be placed solely to
the account of nature, and can confer no advantage on man himself.

In the animal, and in the plant, nature gives not only the destination;
she acts herself and acts alone in the accomplishment of her ends. In
man, nature limits herself in marking her views; she leaves to himself
their accomplishment, it is this alone that makes of him a man.

Alone of all known beings--man, in his quality of person, has the
privilege to break the chain of necessity by his will, and to determine
in himself an entire series of fresh spontaneous phenomena. The act by
which he thus determines himself is properly that which we call an
action