A. And if you had been paralytic, you could not have avoided being exposed to this battery; you would necessarily have heard, and received a wound from the cannon; and you would have as necessarily died.
B. Nothing is more true.
A. In what then consists your liberty, if not in the power that your body has acquired of performing that which from absolute necessity your will requires?
B. You embarrass me. Liberty then is nothing more than the power of doing what I wish?
A. Reflect; and see whether liberty can be understood otherwise.
B. In this case, my hunting dog is as free as myself; he has necessarily the will to run when he sees a hare; and the power of running, if there is nothing the matter with his legs. I have therefore nothing above my dog; you reduce me to the state of the beasts.
A. These are poor sophisms, and they are poor sophists who have instructed you. You are unwilling to be free like your dog. Do you not eat, sleep, and propagate like him, and nearly in the same attitudes? Would you smell otherwise than by your nose? Why would you possess liberty differently from your dog?
B. But I have a soul which reasons, and my dog scarcely reasons at all. He has nothing beyond simple ideas, while I have a thousand metaphysical ideas.
A. Well, you are a thousand times more free than he is; you have a thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but still you are not free in any other manner than your dog is free.
B. What! am I not free to will what I like?