is obliged to follow the current that carries him along; he believes
himself a free agent, because he sometimes consents, sometimes does not
consent, to glide with the stream; which, notwithstanding, always
hurries him forward; he believes himself the master of his condition,
because he is obliged to use his arms under the fear of sinking.

The false ideas he has formed to himself upon free-agency, are in
general thus founded: there are certain events which he judges
_necessary_; either because he sees they are effects that are
constantly, are invariably linked to certain causes, which nothing seems
to prevent; or because he believes he has discovered the chain of causes
and effects that is put in play to produce those events: whilst he
contemplates as _contingent_, other events, of whose causes he is
ignorant; the concatenation of which he does not perceive; with whose
mode of acting he is unacquainted: but in Nature, where every thing is
connected by one common bond, there exists no effect without a cause. In
the moral as well as in the physical world, every thing that happens is
a necessary consequence of causes, either visible or concealed; which
are, of necessity, obliged to act after their peculiar essences. _In
man, free-agency is nothing more than necessity contained within
himself_.





CHAP. XII.

_An examination of the Opinion which pretends that the System of
Fatalism is dangerous._