A nobleman, therefore, appeals with reason
to the name he bears, when on the occurrence of anything to rouse
distrust he repeats his assurance of fidelity and service to the king.
A man's character, as my readers are aware, assuredly comes to him
from his father. It is a narrow-minded and ridiculous thing not to
consider whose son a man is.
FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.
No thoughtful man can have any doubt, after the conclusions reached in
my prize-essay on _Moral Freedom_, that such freedom is to be sought,
not anywhere in nature, but outside of it. The only freedom that
exists is of a metaphysical character. In the physical world freedom
is an impossibility. Accordingly, while our several actions are in no
wise free, every man's individual character is to be regarded as a
free act. He is such and such a man, because once for all it is his
will to be that man. For the will itself, and in itself, and also in
so far as it is manifest in an individual, and accordingly constitutes
the original and fundamental desires of that individual, is
independent of all knowledge, because it is antecedent to such
knowledge. All that it receives from knowledge is the series of
motives by which it successively develops its nature and makes itself
cognisable or visible; but the will itself, as something that lies
beyond time, and so long as it exists at all, never changes.
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