ludimagister

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Let us go further. This liberty—free will—being only the power of acting, what is this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of our organs. Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical problem, he has an apoplectic fit, he certainly has not liberty to resolve his problem. Is a vigorous young man, madly in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms, free to tame his passion? Undoubtedly not. He has the power of enjoying, and has not the power of refraining. Locke was therefore very right to call liberty “power.” When is it that this young man can refrain despite the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea determines in a contrary sense the activity of his body and his soul.

Someone cries: “If it be so, everything is only machine, everything in the universe is subjected to eternal laws” Well, would you have everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices? Either everything is the sequence of the necessity of the nature of things, or everything is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases we are only wheels in the machine of the world.

It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without the pretended liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are useless. Reason, and you will come to a quite contrary conclusion. If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire has the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will is determined by itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to assassinate on the broad highway; if his organs, stricken with horror, make him experience an unconquerable terror, he will stop robbing. His companion’s punishment becomes useful to him and an insurance for society only so long as his will is not free.

— Voltaire