Free Will

This is a little long, but I like it, and it's something I've been thinking about and want to remember. If you really want to understand it, you'll need to read it slowly. And maybe more than once:

The soul, which is created apt for love,
The moment pleasure wakes it into act,
To any pleasant thing is swift to move.

Your apprehension draws from some real fact
An inward image, which it shows to you,
And by that image doth the soul attract:

And if the soul, attracted, yearns thereto,
That yearning's love; 'tis nature doth secure
Her bond in you, which pleasure knits anew.

And as fire mounts, urged upward by the pure
Impulsion of its form, which must aspire
Toward its own matter, where 'twill best endure,

So the enamoured soul falls to desire --
A motion spiritual -- nor rest can find
Till its loved object it enjoy entire.

Now canst thou see how wholly those are blind
To truth, who think all love is laudable
Just in itself, no matter of what kind,

Since (they would argue) its material
Seems always good; yet, though the wax be good,
The imprint is not always good as well.

...

Such things are instincts in you, much the same
As is in bees the honey-making bent;
This prime volition earns nor praise nor blame.

Now, to keep all volitions else well blent
With this, you have a counsellor-power innate
Set there to guard the threshold of assent:

That is the principle to which relate
All your deserts, according as its fan
Is strict to purge right loves from reprobate.

...

Grant, then, all loves that wake in you to be
Born of necessity, you still possess
Within yourselves the power of mastery;

And this same noble faculty it is
Beatrice calls Free Will; if she thereon
Should speak with thee, look thou remember this.

- Dante, Purgatory [Sayers], Canto XVIII

And so we go, driven by our own nature, but guided by our will, and informed, or so we pray, by grace.