A ball that drives another, a hunting-dog that necessarily and
voluntarily follows a stag, a stag that leaps a great ditch not less
necessarily and voluntarily, a roe that gives birth to another roe,
which will bring a third into the world--these things are not more
irresistibly determined than we are to do all that we do. Let us
remember always how inconsistent and absurd it would be for one set
of things to be arranged and the other not.
Every present event is born of the past, and is father of the future;
otherwise the universe would be quite other than it is, as Leibnitz
has well said, more correct in this than in his pre-established
harmony.[70] The eternal chain can be neither broken nor entangled.
The great being who necessarily sustains it cannot let it hang
uncertainly, nor change it; for he would then no longer be the
necessary and immutable being, the being of beings; he would be
frail, inconstant, capricious; he would belie his nature, and exist
no longer.
Hence, an inevitable destiny is the law of nature, as the whole of
antiquity felt. The dread of depriving man of some false liberty,
robbing virtue of its merit, and relieving crime of its horror, has
at times alarmed tender souls; but as soon as they were enlightened
they returned to this great truth, that all things are enchained and
necessary.
Man is free, we repeat, when he can do what he wills to do; but he is
not free to will; it is impossible that he should will without cause.
If this cause is not infallibly followed by its effect, it is no
cause. It would not be more absurd for a cloud to say to the wind:
“I do not wish to be driven by you.” This truth can never injure
morality. Vice is always vice, as disease is always disease. It will
always be necessary to repress the wicked; if they are determined to
evil, we must reply that they are equally predestined to chastisement.
Let us make these truths clearer.