evidently appears to be the master of choosing; from which it is
concluded, evidence has been offered of his free-agency. The reply is,
this example is perfectly simple; man in performing some action which he
is resolved on doing, does not by any means prove his free-agency: the
very desire of displaying this quality, excited by the dispute, becomes
a necessary motive which decides his will either for the one or the
other of these actions: what deludes him in this instance, or that which
persuades him he is a free agent at this moment, is, that he does not
discern the true motive which sets him in action; which is neither more
nor less than the desire of convincing his opponent: if in the heat of
the dispute he insists and asks, "Am I not the master of throwing myself
out of the window?" I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his
reason, there is not even a probability that the desire of proving his
free-agency, will become a motive sufficiently powerful, to make him
sacrifice his life to the attempt; if, notwithstanding this, to prove he
is a free agent, he should actually precipitate himself from the window,
it would not be a sufficient warrantry to conclude he acted freely, but
rather that it was the violence of his temperament which spurred him on
to this folly. Madness is a state that depends upon the heat of the
blood, not upon the will. A fanatic or a hero, braves death as
necessarily as a more phlegmatic man or a coward flies from it. There
is, in point of fact, no difference between the man who is cast out of
the window by another, and the man who throws himself out of it, except
that the impulse in the first instance comes immediately from without,
whilst that which determines the fall in the second case, springs from
within his own peculiar machine, having its more remote cause also
exterior. When Mutius Scaevola held his hand in the fire, he was as much
acting under the influence of necessity, caused by interior motives,
that urged him to this strange action, as if his arm had been held by
strong men; pride, despair, the desire of braving his enemy, a wish to