A. And if you had been paralytic, you could not have avoided being exposed to this battery; you would necessarily have heard, and received a wound from the cannon; and you would have as necessarily died. B. Nothing is more true. A. In what then consists your liberty, if not in the power that your body has acquired of performing that which from absolute necessity your will requires? B. You embarrass me. Liberty then is nothing more than the power of doing what I wish? A. Reflect; and see whether liberty can be understood otherwise. B. In this case, my hunting dog is as free as myself; he has necessarily the will to run when he sees a hare; and the power of running, if there is nothing the matter with his legs. I have therefore nothing above my dog; you reduce me to the state of the beasts. A. These are poor sophisms, and they are poor sophists who have instructed you. You are unwilling to be free like your dog. Do you not eat, sleep, and propagate like him, and nearly in the same attitudes? Would you smell otherwise than by your nose? Why would you possess liberty differently from your dog? B. But I have a soul which reasons, and my dog scarcely reasons at all. He has nothing beyond simple ideas, while I have a thousand metaphysical ideas. A. Well, you are a thousand times more free than he is; you have a thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but still you are not free in any other manner than your dog is free. B. What! am I not free to will what I like? A. What do you understand by that? B. I understand what all the world understands. Is it not every day said that the will is free? A. An adage is not a reason; explain yourself better. B. I understand that I am free to will as I please. A. With your permission, that is nonsense; see you not that it is ridiculous to say--I will will? Consequently, you necessarily will the ideas only which are presented to you. Will you be married, yes or no? B. Suppose I answer that I will neither the one nor the other. A. In that case you would answer like him who said: Some believe Cardinal Mazarin dead, others believe him living; I believe neither the one nor the other. B. Well, I will marry! A. Aye, that is an answer. Why will you marry? B. Because I am in love with a young, beautiful, sweet, well-educated, rich girl, who sings very well, whose parents are very honest people, and I flatter myself that I am beloved by her and welcome to the family. A. There is a reason. You see that you cannot will without a motive. I declare to you that you are free to marry, that is to say, that you have the power of signing the contract, keeping the wedding, and sleeping with your wife. B. How! I cannot will without a motive? Then what will become of the other proverb--"_Sit pro ratione voluntas_"--my will is my reason--I will because I will? A. It is an absurd one, my dear friend; you would then have an effect without a cause.