480. There are countless particular considerations showing that there is just as much free will in spiritual matters as in natural ones. Let everyone, if he will, ask himself whether he can think seventy times a day, or three hundred times a week, about God, the Lord, the Holy Spirit, and the Divine matters known as the spiritual things of the church. Is he then aware of any compulsion, if any pleasure, even if any desire, prompts him to do so, and this whether he is a believer or not? Test yourself too, whatever your present state, to see if you can think anything at all without free will, whether in your conversation, in your prayers to God, and your preachings or your listenings. Is not free will the all-important feature in them? In fact, without free will in each respect, even the tiniest details, could you breathe any more than a statue? For breathing follows thought and the speech that expresses it at every step. I say no more than a statue, and not any more than an animal, for an animal's breathing depends upon its natural free will, but a human being's breathing depends upon his free will in natural and spiritual matters at once, since man does not acquire abilities at birth like an animal. An animal with all the ideas which attend upon its natural love acquires by birth a knowledge of such matters as are necessary for feeding and reproduction. Man, however, lacks any ideas born with him, and only acquires by birth the capacity to know, understand and be wise, and a tendency to love himself and the world, and also the neighbour and God. Therefore, if he were deprived of free will in every act of will and thought, we say that he would not breathe any more than a statue, not any more than an animal.