401.  Here is, however, the foundation of M. Bayle’s argument.  He says that we do not do that of which we know not the way it is done.  But it is a principle which I do not concede to him.  Let us listen to his dissertation (p. 767 seqq.):  ’It is an astonishing thing that almost all philosophers (with the exception of those who expounded Aristotle, and who admitted a universal intelligence distinct from our soul, and cause of our perceptions:  see in the Historical and Critical Dictionary, Note E of the article “Averroes”) have shared the popular belief that we form our ideas actively.  Yet where is the man who knows not on the one hand that he is in absolute ignorance as to how ideas are made, and on the other hand, that he could not sew two stitches if he were ignorant of how to sew?  Is the sewing of two stitches in itself a work more difficult than the painting in one’s mind of a rose, the very first time one’s eyes rest upon it, and although one has never learnt this kind of painting?  Does it not appear on the contrary that this mental portrait is in itself a work more difficult than tracing on canvas the shape of a flower, a thing we cannot do without having learnt it?  We are all convinced that a key would be of no use to us for opening a chest if we were ignorant as to how to use the key, and yet we imagine that our soul is the efficient cause of the movement of our arms, despite that it knows neither where the nerves are which must be used for this movement, nor whence to obtain the animal spirits that are to flow into these nerves.  We have the experience every day that the ideas we would fain recall do not come, and that they appear of themselves when we are no longer thinking of them.  If that does not prevent us from thinking that we are their efficient cause, what reliance shall one place on the proof of feeling, which to M. Jacquelot appears so conclusive?  Does our authority over our ideas more often fall short than our authority over our volitions?  If we were to count up carefully, we should find in the course of our life more velleities than volitions, that is, more evidences of the servitude of our will than of its dominion.  How many times does one and the same man not experience an inability to do a certain act of will (for example, an act of love for a man who had just injured him; an act of scorn for a fine sonnet that he had composed; an act of hatred for a mistress; an act of approval of an absurd epigram.  Take note that I speak only of inward acts, [364] expressed by an “I will”, such as “I will scorn”, “approve”, etc.) even if there were a hundred pistoles to be gained forthwith, and he ardently desired to gain these hundred pistoles, and he were fired with the ambition to convince himself by an experimental proof that he is master in his own domain?