It is in vain, in order to convince us we are not free, that some would represent us as necessarily submitting to the impulse of various exterior objects; comprehending, among those objects, every thing that is subtle in moral ideas, and uniting them under the general name of motives, and giving afterwards to these motives a physical force which we are bound to obey; but to be free, is it necessary that we act without motives? then man would be indeed evidently a piece of mechanism. It is certain, that we are, in all our actions, determined by reason, taste, or a cause of preference; but it is our mind which comprehends these various considerations, which weighs, compares, and modifies; it is our mind which listens to the counsels of virtue, and which replies to the language of our passions; it is in order to enlighten itself that it borrows from the memory the succours of experience; it is then our mind which prepares, composes, and improves every thing which we term motives, and it is after this intellectual labour that we act. There is too much order, unity, and harmony in our thoughts, to allow us to suppose them the mere effect of exterior objects; which, under the form of ideas, come without order to impress themselves on our brain; and until we are made acquainted with the works of chaos, we shall believe with reason that every where there is that unity, that order; that there is a faculty capable of re-assembling every thing that is scattered, and uniting to one end all that is mixed without design. As soon as we are impelled to believe, that there is a master of all our perceptions, and that we feel this master act, how is it possible not to be certain that it is our mind which acts? It is then, in breaking loose from its operations, that we are stripped of our liberty, and that we at length suppose that our will is the necessary consequence of all exterior objects, as if it were the colours, and not the painter, which produced a picture. However, if we secure our mind from that dependence to which some wish to reduce it, our actions will not obey these irresistible emotions; for if they grant that we have liberty of thought, we have free will.