289.  Our knowledge is of two kinds, distinct or confused.  Distinct knowledge, or intelligence, occurs in the actual use of reason; but the senses supply us with confused thoughts.  And we may say that we are immune from bondage in so far as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are the slaves of passion in so far as our perceptions are confused.  In this sense we have not all the freedom of spirit that were to be desired, and we may say with St. Augustine that being subject to sin we have the freedom of a slave.  Yet a slave, slave as he is, nevertheless has freedom to choose according to the state wherein he is, although more often than not he is under the stern necessity of choosing between two evils, because a superior force prevents him from attaining the goods whereto he aspires.  That which in a slave is effected by bonds and constraint in us is effected by passions, whose violence is sweet, but none the less pernicious.  In truth we will only that which pleases us:  but unhappily what pleases us now is often a real evil, which would displease us if we had the eyes of the understanding open.  Nevertheless that evil state of the slave, which is also our own, does not prevent us, any more than him, from making a free choice of that which pleases us most, in the state to which we are reduced, in proportion to our present strength and knowledge.

290.  As for spontaneity, it belongs to us in so far as we have within us the source of our actions, as Aristotle rightly conceived.  The [304] impressions of external things often, indeed, divert us from our path, and it was commonly believed that, at least in this respect, some of the sources of our actions were outside ourselves.  I admit that one is bound to speak thus, adapting oneself to the popular mode of expression, as one may, in a certain sense, without doing violence to truth.  But when it is a question of expressing oneself accurately I maintain that our spontaneity suffers no exception and that external things have no physical influence upon us, I mean in the strictly philosophical sense.

291.  For better understanding of this point, one must know that true spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances, and that in the intelligent or free substance this becomes a mastery over its actions.  That cannot be better explained than by the System of Pre-established Harmony, which I indeed propounded some years ago.  There I pointed out that by nature every simple substance has perception, and that its individuality consists in the perpetual law which brings about the sequence of perceptions that are assigned to it, springing naturally from one another, to represent the body that is allotted to it, and through its instrumentality the entire universe, in accordance with the point of view proper to this simple substance and without its needing to receive any physical influence from the body.  Even so the body also for its part adapts itself to the wishes of the soul by its own laws, and consequently only obeys it according to the promptings of these laws.  Whence it follows that the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity, so that it depends only upon God and upon itself in its actions.