"I thus ask Spinoza: if everything comes from divine
necessity, following which the increasingly weakened
vibrations of this necessity gave rise to souls locked in
bondage to the passions, how can it come about that these
souls should find, by means of their adequate ideas, more
power to return to God than they ever received from the
moment of their existence, if they are not in themselves
free forces?"
...
“Man…is a compound of powers.” Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, La Guerre et la Paix (Paris: Rivière, 1861), p. 128.
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The living man is a group, like the plant and the crystal,
but to a higher degree than these; all the more vital,
sensitive, and intelligent since its organs, secondary groups,
form a more perfect accord with one another, and form
a vaster combination.
...
Spontaneity, to a lower degree in the unorganized beings,
to a higher degree in the plants and animals, reached, under
the name of freedom, its fullness [plénitude] in man, who
alone tends to free himself from any fatalism, objective
as well as subjective, and who in fact does free himself.”
...