men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which th… - Benedictus de Spinoza

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men are
mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up
of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the
causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom,
therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their
actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the
will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond
thereto. What the will is, and how it moves the body, they none
of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign
dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke
either laughter or disgust. So, again, when we look at the sun,
we imagine that it is distant from us about two hundred feet;
this error does not lie solely in this fancy, but in the fact
that, while we thus imagine, we do not know the sun's true
distance or the cause of the fancy. For although we afterwards
learn, that the sun is distant from us more than six hundred of
the earth's diameters, we none the less shall fancy it to be near;
for we do not imagine the sun as near us, because we are
ignorant of its true distance, but because the modification of
our body involves the essence of the sun, in so far as our said
body is affected thereby.