THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL.--The human soul is endowed with freedom to do good or evil. What proof is there of this freedom? First, the inward feeling that we have. Every evident idea is true. Now, not only have we the idea of this freedom, but it would be impossible for us not to have it. Freedom "is known without proofs, merely by the experience we have of it." It is by the feeling of our freedom, of our free-will that we understand that we exist as a being, as a thing which is not merely a thing. The true _ego_ is the will. Even more than an intelligent being, man is a free individual, and only feels himself to be a man when feeling himself free, so that he might not believe himself to be intelligent, nor think himself sensible, etc., but not to think himself free would for him be moral suicide; and in fact he actually never does anything which he does not believe himself to be free to do--that is, which he does not believe that he might avoid doing, if he so wished. Those who say, "It is simply the feeling that it is better for ourselves which tends to make us do this instead of doing that," are deeply in error. They forget that we often prefer the worst for ourselves in order to prove to ourselves that we are free and therefore have no other _motive power than our own freedom_. (And this is exactly what contemporaneous philosophy has thus formulated: "Will is neither determinate nor indeterminate, it is determinative.") "Even when a very obvious reason leads us to a thing, although morally speaking it is difficult for us to do the opposite, nevertheless, speaking absolutely, we can, for we are always free to prevent ourselves from pursuing a good thing clearly known ... provided only that _we think it is beneficial thereby to give evidence of the truth of our free-will_." It is the pure and simple wish to be free which _creates an action;_ it is the all-powerful liberty. As has been happily observed, in relation to the universe the philosophy of Descartes is a mechanical philosophy; in relation to man the philosophy of Descartes is a philosophy of will. As has also been remarked, there are very striking analogies between Corneille and Descartes from the point of view of the apotheosis of the will, and the _Meditations_ having appeared after the great works of Corneille, it is not so much that Corneille was a Cartesian, as that Descartes was a follower of Corneille.