Man’s birth does not depend upon his choice; he was not asked if he would or would not come into the world; nature did not consult him upon the country and the parents that she gave him; the ideas he acquired, his opinions, his true or false notions are the necessary fruits of the education which he has received, and of which he has not been the master; his passions and his desires are the necessary results of the temperament which nature has given him, and of the ideas with which he has been inspired; during the whole course of his life, his wishes and his actions are determined by his surroundings, his habits, his occupations, his pleasures, his conversations, and by the thoughts which present themselves involuntarily to him; in short, by a multitude of events and accidents which are beyond his control.  Incapable of foreseeing the future, he knows neither what he will wish, nor what he will do in the time which must immediately follow the present.  Man passes his life, from the moment of his birth to that of his death, without having been free one instant.  Man, you say, wishes, deliberates, chooses, determines; hence you conclude that his actions are free.  It is true that man intends, but he is not master of his will or of his desires.  He can desire and wish only what he judges advantageous for himself; he can not love pain nor detest pleasure.  Man, it will be said, sometimes prefers pain to pleasure; but then, he prefers a passing pain in the hope of procuring a greater and more durable pleasure.  In this case, the idea of a greater good determines him to deprive himself of one less desirable.

It is not the lover who gives to his mistress the features by which he is enchanted; he is not then the master to love or not to love the object of his tenderness; he is not the master of the imagination or the temperament which dominates him; from which it follows, evidently, that man is not the master of the wishes and desires which rise in his soul, independently of him.  But man, say you, can resist his desires; then he is free.  Man resists his desires when the motives which turn him from an object are stronger than those which draw him toward it; but then, his resistance is necessary.  A man who fears dishonor and punishment more than he loves money, resists necessarily the desire to take possession of another’s money.  Are we not free when we deliberate?—­but has one the power to know or not to know, to be uncertain or to be assured?  Deliberation is the necessary effect of the uncertainty in which we find ourselves with reference to the results of our actions.  As soon as we believe ourselves certain of these results, we necessarily decide; and then we act necessarily according as we shall have judged right or wrong.  Our judgments, true or false, are not free; they are necessarily determined by ideas which we have received, or which our mind has formed.  Man is not free in his choice; he is evidently compelled to choose what he judges the