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.

PSYCHOLOGY OF DESCARTES.--Descartes has almost written a psychology,
what with his _Treatise on the Passions_ and his letters and, besides,