hasten its judgement. For we can seek
means beforehand to arrest ourselves, when occasion arises, on the sliding
step of a rash judgement; we can find some incident to justify postponement
of our resolution even at the moment when the matter appears ready to be
judged. Although our opinion and our act of willing be not directly objects
of our will (as I have already observed), one sometimes, takes measures
nevertheless, to will and even to believe in due time, that which one does
not will, or believe, now. So great is the profundity of the spirit of man.

65. And now, to bring to a conclusion this question of _spontaneity_, it
must be said that, on a rigorous definition, the soul has within it the
principle of all its actions, and even of all its passions, and that the
same is true in all the simple substances scattered throughout Nature,
although there be freedom only in those that are intelligent. In the
popular sense notwithstanding, speaking in accordance with appearances, we
must say that the soul depends in some way upon the body and upon the
impressions of the senses: much as we speak with Ptolemy and Tycho in
everyday converse, and think with Copernicus, when it is a question of the
rising and the setting of the sun.

66. One may however give a true and philosophic sense to this _mutual
dependence_ which we suppose between the soul and the body. It is that the
one of these two substances depends upon the other ideally, in so far as
the reason of that which is done in the one can be furnished by that which
is in the other. This had already happened when God ordered beforehand the
harmony that there would be between them. Even so would that [159]
automaton, that should fulfil the servant's function, depend upon me
_ideally_, in virtue of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future
orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me at the right moment
all through the morrow. The knowledge of my future intentions would have
actuated this great craftsman, who would accordingly have fashioned the
automaton: my influence would be objective, and his physical. For in so far
as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God has accommodated the
body to the soul, and has arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to
execute its orders. And in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its
perceptions are confused, God has accommodated the soul to the body, in
such sort that the soul is swayed by the passio