more a free agent to think than to act:_ a truth that will be again
proved in the following chapter.





CHAP. XI

_Of the System of Man's free agency._


Those who have pretended that the _soul_ is distinguished from the body,
is immaterial, draws its ideas from its own peculiar source, acts by its
own energies without the aid of any exterior object; by a consequence of
their own system, have enfranchised it from those physical laws,
according to which all beings of which we have a knowledge are obliged
to act. They have believed that the foul is mistress of its own conduct,
is able to regulate its own peculiar operations; has the faculty to
determine its will by its own natural energy; in a word, they have
pretended man is a _free agent_.

It has been already sufficiently proved, that the soul is nothing more
than the body, considered relatively to some of its functions, more
concealed than others: it has been shewn, that this soul, even when it
shall be supposed immaterial, is continually modified conjointly with
the body; is submitted to all its motion; that without this it would
remain inert and dead: that, consequently, it is subjected to the
influence of those material, to the operation those physical causes,
which give impulse to the body; of which the mode of existence, whether