We get the same result if we consider the relation of final and efficient causes. It is only when speaking in a very general way that Leibniz opposes action as determined by precedent activities to that directed towards the attainment of an end. He does not really mean that _some_ action is physical, while _other_ is teleological. He cannot suppose that some action has an antecedent cause, while other has a purpose. The very essence of his thought is that action is both mechanical and teleological; that all action follows in a law of order from precedent action, and that all fulfils a certain spiritual function. The distinction is not, with Leibniz, one between two kinds of action, but between two ways of looking at every action. The desire to go rather than to stay, has its efficient cause; the movements by which the desire is executed, have their final cause. The truth of the matter seems to be that Leibniz in his desire to guard against being thought a fatalist, or one denying all freedom, uses terms which are compatible only with a freedom of indifference. So in his statement that man's action is free because "contingent," he seems actuated rather by a wish to avoid the hateful term "necessity" than by considerations strictly in harmony with his own principles. Had he confined his use of the term "contingent," however, simply to re-stating the fact that human action is spontaneous, no such apparent contradiction would have presented itself. Human actions may be called contingent, as physical actions are not, because the latter always seem to be externally determined, while the former are internally directed. Motions act from without; motives from within. The cause of the falling of a stone lies outside it; the source of a desire which moves to action is from the mind itself. We are thus introduced to contingency as a synonym of "spontaneity."