is numbered among chimerical notions.  But when someone maintains that a thing does not exist because the common herd does not perceive it, here the populace cannot be regarded as a good judge, being, as it is, only guided by the senses.  Many people think that air is nothing when it is not stirred by the wind.  The majority do not know of imperceptible bodies, the fluid which causes weight or elasticity, magnetic matter, to say nothing of atoms and other indivisible substances.  Do we say then that these things are not because the common herd does not know of them?  If so, we shall be able to say also that the soul acts sometimes without any disposition or inclination contributing towards the production of its act, because there are many dispositions and inclinations which are not sufficiently perceived by the common herd, for lack of attention and thought.  Secondly, as to the marks of the power in question, I have already refuted the claim advanced for it, that it possesses the advantage of making one active, the real cause of one’s action, and subject to responsibility and morality:  [433] these are not genuine marks of its existence.  Here is one the author adduces, which is not genuine either, namely, that we have within us a power of resisting natural appetites, that is to say of resisting not only the senses, but also the reason.  But I have already stated this fact:  one resists natural appetites through other natural appetites.  One sometimes endures inconveniences, and is happy to do so; but that is on account of some hope or of some satisfaction which is combined with the ill and exceeds it:  either one anticipates good from it, or one finds good in it.  The author asserts that it is through that power to transform appearances which he has introduced on the scene, that we render agreeable what at first displeased us.  But who cannot see that the true reason is, that application and attention to the object and custom change our disposition and consequently our natural appetites?  Once we become used to a rather high degree of cold or heat, it no longer incommodes us as it formerly did, and yet no one would ascribe this effect to our power of choice.  Time is needed, for instance, to bring about that hardening, or rather that callosity, which enables the hands of certain workmen to resist a degree of heat that would burn our hands.  The populace, whom the author invokes, guess correctly the cause of this effect, although they sometimes apply it in a laughable manner.  Two serving-maids being close to the fire in the kitchen, one who has burnt herself says to the other:  Oh, my dear, who will be able to endure the fire of purgatory?  The other answers:  Don’t be absurd, my good woman, one grows used to everything.