In restoring thus to our soul its original dignity, do you not perceive, that we approach nearer to nature, than in adopting those systems and explications which assimilate our intellectual faculties to the regular vibrations of a pendulum? or would you like better still to compare them to those little balls which go out of their niches to strike our brain, which by various ramifications, produce that shock which impels our will? I see, in all this, only childish figures, put in the place of those names which indicate at least, by their abstraction, the indefinite extent of the ideas which they represent, and the respect they merit. It is easy to call a motive a little moving ball; it is easy to call uncertainty or repentance the combat of two of these balls, till the arrival of a third forms a determination; and the concurrence of many to the same point excites, in us, an impetuous passion: but who sees not that, after having endeavoured to debase the functions of the mind by these wretched comparisons, the difficulty remains undiminished? In short, if the meditations and the researches of our minds, on the existence and the nature of our liberty, presents us only impenetrable clouds and obscurity, is it not singular, that in the midst of this darkness we should reject all the information of our instinctive sentiments, which only can clearly explain every thing that we in vain search for by other means? What would you say of a man born blind, who would not be directed by the voice? We are assuredly better instructed in the constitution of our nature by our feelings, than by metaphysical arguments! they compose an internal part of the essence of our soul; and we ought to consider them, in some measure, as a sally of the incomprehensible formation, whose mysteries we cannot penetrate. Such a doctrine, which came to us from a divine hand, is more deserving of confidence than the interpretations of men. There are secrets which philosophers try in vain to explain, all their efforts are useless to represent by comparison, that which is alone and without resemblance. One would think, that nature, guessing the false reasoning which would mislead us, has purposely bestowed an inward conviction of the existence of our free will, in composing our natural life of two movements very distinct: one depends on a necessity, whose laws we are not acquainted with, and do not govern; whilst the other is entirely submitted to the government of our reason. Such a comparison would be sufficient to convince us, if we sought merely for the truth.