They must have also, as we
have, the power of acting by virtue of their perceptions, by virtue of
the play of their organs.
Someone cries: "If it be so, everything is only machine, everything in
the universe is subjected to eternal laws." Well! would you have
everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices? Either
everything is the sequence of the necessity of the nature of things, or
everything is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in
both cases we are only wheels in the machine of the world.
It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without the pretended
liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are useless. Reason, and you
will come to a quite contrary conclusion.
If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire has the
liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will is
determined by itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to
assassinate on the broad highway; if his organs, stricken with horror,
make him experience an unconquerable terror, he will stop robbing. His
companion's punishment becomes useful to him and an insurance for
society only so long as his will is not free.
Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will. That
is what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers liberty in the
theological sense, it is a matter so sublime that profane eyes dare not
raise themselves to it.
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