most useful or the most agreeable for himself.  When he suspends his choice, he is not more free; he is forced to suspend it till he knows or believes he knows the qualities of the objects presented to him, or until he has weighed the consequence of his actions.  Man, you will say, decides every moment on actions which he knows will endanger him; man kills himself sometimes, then he is free.  I deny it!  Has man the ability to reason correctly or incorrectly?  Do not his reason and his wisdom depend either upon opinions that he has formed, or upon his mental constitution?  As neither the one nor the other depends upon his will, they can not in any wise prove his liberty.

If I make the wager to do or not to do a thing, am I not free?  Does it not depend upon me to do or not to do it?  No; I will answer you, the desire to win the wager will necessarily determine you to do or not to do the thing in question.  “But if I consent to lose the wager?” Then the desire to prove to me that you are free will have become to you a stronger motive than the desire to win the wager; and this motive will necessarily have determined you to do or not to do what was understood between us.  But you will say, “I feel myself free.”  It is an illusion which may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, which, lighting on the shaft of a heavy wagon, applauded itself as driver of the vehicle which carried it.  Man who believes himself free, is a fly who believes himself the master-motor in the machine of the universe, while he himself, without his own volition, is carried on by it.  The feeling which makes us believe that we are free to do or not to do a thing, is but a pure illusion.  When we come to the veritable principle of our actions, we will find that they are nothing but the necessary results of our wills and of our desires, which are never within our power.  You believe yourselves free because you do as you choose; but are you really free to will or not to will, to desire or not to desire?  Your wills and your desires, are they not necessarily excited by objects or by qualities which do not depend upon you at all?

LXXXI.—­WE SHOULD NOT CONCLUDE FROM THIS THAT SOCIETY HAS NOT THE RIGHT TO CHASTISE THE WICKED.

If the actions of men are necessary, if men are not free, what right has society to punish the wicked who infest it?  Is it not very unjust to chastise beings who could not act otherwise than they did?  If the wicked act from the impulse of their corrupt nature, society in punishing them acts necessarily on its side from the desire to preserve itself.  Certain objects produce in us the feeling of pain; therefore our nature compels us to hate them, and incites us to remove them.  A tiger pressed by hunger, attacks the man whom he wishes to devour; but the man is not the master of his fear of the tiger, and seeks necessarily the means of exterminating it.

LXXXII.—­REFUTATION OF THE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF FREE WILL.