billiard ball which feels it moves others, but which does not feel that it
is moved. What we call decision is an idea which decides us because it
exercises more power over us than the others do; what we term deliberation
is a hesitancy between two or three ideas which at the moment have equal
force; what we name volition is an idea, and what we call will is our
understanding applied to facts. We do not want to fight; we conceive the
idea of fighting and the idea carries us away; we do not want to hang
ourselves; we have the obsessing idea of hanging ourselves and this thought
runs away with us.

HIS MORAL SYSTEM.--Spinoza wrote a system of morality. Is it not
radically impossible to write a system of morality when the author does not
believe in free-will? The admirable originality of Spinoza, even though
his idea can be contested, is precisely that morality depends on belief in
the necessity of all things--that is, the more one is convinced of this
necessity so much the more does one attain high morality--that is, the more
one believes oneself free the more one is _immoral_. The man who
believes himself free claims to run counter to the universal order, and
morality precisely is adherence to it; the man who believes himself free
seeks for an individual good just as if there could be an individual good,
just as if the best for each one were not to submit to the necessary laws
of everything, laws which constitute what is good; the man who thinks
himself free sets himself against God, believes himself God since he
believes himself to be creator of what he does, and since he believes
himself capable of deranging something in the mechanism and of introducing
a certain amount of movement. As a matter of fact, he does nothing of the
kind; but he believes that he does it, and this mere thought, false and low
as it is, keeps him in the most miserable condition of life; to sum up, a
man who believes himself free may not perhaps be an atheist, but he is
ungodly.