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moves the body, nor how many various degrees of motion
it can impart to the body, nor how quickly it can move it.
Thus, when men say that this or that physical action has
its origin in the mind, which latter has dominion over the
body, they are using words without meaning, or are
confessing in specious phraseology that they are ignorant
of the cause of the said action, and do not wonder at it.

But, they will say, whether we know or do not know the
means whereby the mind acts on the body, we have, at
any rate, experience of the fact that unless the human mind
is in a fit state to think, the body remains inert.  Moreover,
we have experience, that the mind alone can determine
whether we speak or are silent, and a variety of similar
states which, accordingly, we say depend on the mind's
decree.  But, as to the first point, I ask such objectors,
whether experience does not also teach, that if the body
be inactive the mind is simultaneously unfitted for
thinking?  For when the body is at rest in sleep, the mind
simultaneously is in a state of torpor also, and has no
power of thinking, such as it possesses when the body
is awake.  Again, I think everyone's experience will
confirm the statement, that the mind is not at all times
equally fit for thinking on a given subject, but according
as the body is more or less fitted for being stimulated by
the image of this or that object, so also is the mind more
or less fitted for contemplating the said object.

But, it will be urged, it is impossible that solely from
the laws of nature considered as extended substance,
we should be able to deduce the causes of buildings,
pictures, and things of that kind, which are produced
only by human art; nor would the human body, unless
it were determined and led by the mind, be capable of
building a single temple.  However, I have just pointed
out that the objectors cannot fix the limits of the body's
power, or say what can be concluded from a consideration
of its sole nature, whereas they have experience of many
things being accomplished solely by the laws of nature,
which they would never have believed possible except
under the direction of mind:  such are the actions performed
by somnambulists while asleep, and wondered at by their
performers when awake.  I would further call attention
to the mechanism of the human body, which far surpasses
in complexity all that has been put together by human art,
not to repeat what I have already shown, namely, that
from nature, under whatever attribute she be considered,
infinite results follow.  As for the second objection, I
submit that the world would be much happier, if men were
as fully able to keep silence as they are to speak.
Experience abundantly shows that men can govern anything
more easily than their tongues, and restrain anything more
easily than their appetites; when it comes about that many
 believe, that we are only free in respect to objects which
we moderately desire, because our desire for such can
easily be controlled by the thought of something else
frequently remembered, but that we are by no means free
in respect to what we seek with violent emotion, for our
desire cannot then be allayed with the remembrance of
anything else.  However, unless such persons had proved
by experience that we do many things which we afterwards
repent of, and again that we often, when assailed by contrary
emotions, see the better and follow the worse, there would
be nothing to prevent their believing that we are free in all
things.  Thus an infant believes that of its own free will it
desires milk, an angry child believes that it freely desires
to run away; further, a drunken man believes that he utters
from the free decision of his mind words which, when he
is sober, he would willingly have withheld:  thus, too, a
delirious man, a garrulous woman, a child, and others
of like complexion, believe that they speak from the free
decision of their mind, when they are in reality unable to
restrain their impulse to talk.  Experience teaches us no
less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves to be
free, simply because they are conscious of their actions,
and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are
determined; and, further, it is plain that the dictates of the
mind are but another name for the appetites, and therefore
vary according to the varying state of the body.  Everyone
shapes his actions according to his emotion, those who are
assailed by conflicting emotions know not what they wish;
those who are not attacked by any emotion are readily swayed
this way or that.  All these considerations clearly show that
a mental decision and a bodily appetite, or determined state,
are simultaneous, or rather are one and the same thing, which
we call decision, when it is regarded under and explained
through the attribute of thought, and a conditioned state, when

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