impulse. Is the impulse self-generated, are the bodies self-impelled? No,
they are moved. What is the primary motive force? It is God. Souls are
substances without extension and motive forces. In this respect they are
analogous to God. They are united to bodies and act on them. How? This is
an impenetrable mystery, but they are closely and substantially united to
the bodies, which is proved by physical pains depressing the soul and moral
sufferings depressing the body; and they act on them, not by creating
movements, for the quantity of movements is always the same, but by
directing the movements after this fashion or that. Souls being spiritual,
there is no reason for their disaggregation, that is, their demise, and in
fact they do not die.

It is for this reason that Descartes lays such stress on animals not having
souls. If they had souls, the souls would be spiritual, they would not be
susceptible to disaggregation and would be immortal. "Save atheism, there
is no doctrine more dangerous and detestable than that," but animals are
soulless and purely mechanism; Descartes exerts himself to prove this in
great detail, and he thus escapes avowing the immortality of the souls of
animals, which is repugnant to him, or by allowing that they perish with
the bodies to be exposed to the objection: "Will it not be the same with
the souls of men?"

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