No material creature is in itself active, and I am active.  In vain do you argue this point with me; I feel it, and it is this feeling which speaks to me more forcibly than the reason which disputes it.  I have a body which is acted upon by other bodies, and it acts in turn upon them; there is no doubt about this reciprocal action; but my will is independent of my senses; I consent or I resist; I yield or I win the victory, and I know very well in myself when I have done what I wanted and when I have merely given way to my passions.  I have always the power to will, but not always the strength to do what I will.  When I yield to temptation I surrender myself to the action of external objects.  When I blame myself for this weakness, I listen to my own will alone; I am a slave in my vices, a free man in my remorse; the feeling of freedom is never effaced in me but when I myself do wrong, and when I at length prevent the voice of the soul from protesting against the authority of the body.

I am only aware of will through the consciousness of my own will, and intelligence is no better known to me.  When you ask me what is the cause which determines my will, it is my turn to ask what cause determines my judgment; for it is plain that these two causes are but one; and if you understand clearly that man is active in his judgments, that his intelligence is only the power to compare and judge, you will see that his freedom is only a similar power or one derived from this; he chooses between good and evil as he judges between truth and falsehood; if his judgment is at fault, he chooses amiss.  What then is the cause that determines his will?  It is his judgment.  And what is the cause that determines his judgment?  It is his intelligence, his power of judging; the determining cause is in himself.  Beyond that, I understand nothing.

No doubt I am not free not to desire my own welfare, I am not free to desire my own hurt; but my freedom consists in this very thing, that I can will what is for my own good, or what I esteem as such, without any external compulsion.  Does it follow that I am not my own master because I cannot be other than myself?

The motive power of all action is in the will of a free creature; we can go no farther.  It is not the word freedom that is meaningless, but the word necessity.  To suppose some action which is not the effect of an active motive power is indeed to suppose effects without cause, to reason in a vicious circle.  Either there is no original impulse, or every original impulse has no antecedent cause, and there is no will properly so-called without freedom.  Man is therefore free to act, and as such he is animated by an immaterial substance; that is the third article of my creed.  From these three you will easily deduce the rest, so that I need not enumerate them.