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And take good care to observe further, that if there be in us any thing that belongs to the consciousness, it is evidently and par excellence the sense of our personal unity; or what is more, the consciousness of our moral liberty.

Man is a moral force, only inasmuch as he is a free force. Any philosophy that attempts the liberty of man, attempts, without knowing it, morals itself. Man then is free, and as he is a moral agent only in proportion as he is free, it would seem that his liberty is the only attribute of his soul from which Providence has designed to remove all the boundaries.

“What is here very remarkable,” says Descartes, “is that, of all within me, there is not one thing so perfect or so great, but that I know it might be greater and more perfect. Thus, for example, if I consider my faculty of conceiving, I find it of very small extent, and very limited. If, in the same manner, I examine the memory, the imagination, or any other one of my faculties, I find not one that is not very limited and very small. Within me there is only my will or my liberty of free will, which I feel to be so great that I conceive not the idea of another more full and of greater extent.”[45]