I begin by declaring to my reader that, by everything good or bad that I have done throughout my life, I am sure that I have earned merit or incurred guilt, and that hence I must consider myself a free agent. The doctrine of the Stoics, and of any other sect, on the power of Destiny is a figment of the imagination which smacks of atheism. I am not only a monotheist but a Christian whose faith is strengthened by philosophy, which has never injured anything. . . .
Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it, for the more power he attributes to Destiny, the more he deprives himself of the power which God granted him when he gave him reason.
Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. If we use it to make ourselves humble and just, we cannot but please him who have it to us. God does not cease to be God except for those who consider his nonexistence possible. They cannot suffer a greater punishment.
--Casanova, History of My Life, Preface
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