Feast, and a man of romantic disposition might even affect the outward appearances of it and persuade himself that he has it in reality.  But in Nature there will never be any choice to which one is not prompted by the previous representation of good or evil, by inclinations or by reasons:  and I have always challenged the supporters of this absolute indifference to show an example thereof.  Nevertheless if I call fantastic this choice whereto one is determined by nothing, I am far from calling visionaries the supporters of that hypothesis, especially our gifted author.  The Peripatetics teach some beliefs of this nature; but it would be the greatest injustice in the world to be ready to despise on that account an Occam, a Suisset, a Cesalpino, a Conringius, men who still advocated certain scholastic opinions which have been improved upon to-day.

3.  One of these opinions, revived, however, and introduced by [407] degenerate scholasticism, and in the Age of Chimeras, is vague indifference of choice, or real chance, assumed in our souls; as if nothing gave us any inclination unless we perceived it distinctly, and as if an effect could be without causes, when these causes are imperceptible.  It is much as some have denied the existence of insensible corpuscles because they do not see them.  Modern philosophers have improved upon the opinions of the Schoolmen by showing that, according to the laws of corporeal nature, a body can only be set in motion by the movement of another body propelling it.  Even so we must believe that our souls (by virtue of the laws of spiritual nature) can only be moved by some reason of good or evil:  and this even when no distinct knowledge can be extracted from our mental state, on account of a concourse of innumerable little perceptions which make us now joyful and now sad, or again of some other humour, and cause us to like one thing more than another without its being possible to say why.  Plato, Aristotle and even Thomas Aquinas, Durand and other Schoolmen of the sounder sort reason on that question like the generality of men, and as unprejudiced people always have reasoned.  They assume that freedom lies in the use of reason and the inclinations, which cause the choice or rejection of objects.  But finally some rather too subtle philosophers have extracted from their alembic an inexplicable notion of choice independent of anything whatsoever, which is said to do wonders in solving all difficulties.  But the notion is caught up at the outset in one of the greatest difficulties, by offending against the grand principle of reasoning which makes us always assume that nothing is done without some sufficient cause or reason.  As the Schoolmen often forgot to apply this great principle, admitting certain prime occult qualities, one need not wonder if this fiction of vague indifference met with applause amongst them, and if even most worthy men have been imbued therewith.  Our author, who is otherwise rid of many of the errors of the ordinary Schoolmen, is still deluded by this fiction:  but he is without doubt one of the most skilful of those who have supported it.