Summary : De la volonté

This text is only front matter consisting of a Project Gutenberg eBook licensing notice, catalog metadata, title page details, and a comprehensive bibliography of works by the author Marguerite Duportal. The metadata indicates that the eBook is a digital version of De la volonté by Marguerite Duportal published in Paris by Lethielleux in 1926 and released by Project Gutenberg in February 2024. The opening section details the standard terms of use for copies distributed within the United States and internationally under the Project Gutenberg License. It also lists technical production credits involving Laurent Vogel and the Bibliotheque nationale de France. The subsequent bibliographic section outlines multiple literary works authored by Marguerite Duportal across different publishing houses including Librairie des saints peres Haton Georges Ondet and Lesot. The listed works include poetry collections such as Les Chrysalides and Le Prisme des heures dramatic pieces in verse and prose such as Le Theatre au Salon and Le Theatre au Pensionnat prose narratives like L enigme du bonheur and plays or acts intended for young audiences such as Le Serment de Loic and Le barbier du nouveau Seigneur. Several of these preceding publications and forthcoming titles like Le Sachet and De la Souffrance are noted as having received literary prizes or crowns from organizations such as the Academie francaise the Academie de Marseille and the Comite de litterature spiritualiste.

The text opens with a dedication addressed to everyone who believes they lack willpower or suffer from a weak will. The author states the book is designed to prove that nobody is without willpower, that everyone possesses the exact same dose and power of it, and that every single person carries within themselves the will of a Napoleon. This introductory section establishes that the discussion focuses on a fundamental truth rather than a personal theory. Following this, the text examines the widespread societal belief that some people are born with a weak will or none at all. Society often blames these individuals for failing in their duties while attempting to correct them through moral education. The author highlights the logical contradiction in this reasoning. If such individuals were truly moral invalids incapable of change, blaming them would be entirely unfair. Conversely, if their weakness is their own fault, it means they simply choose not to have a will, proving that they possess one. Moralists and educators frequently try to instill willpower in others through habit, practice, and the passage of time. However, the author argues that all such attempts are fundamentally flawed. Direct transmission or transfusion of a moral faculty like willpower is impossible because one's will is strictly personal and cannot be given by another person. While repeated actions can improve virtues like patience or sobriety, those improvements occur only because the individual already possesses and exercises the underlying willpower required to perform those repeated acts. Finally, the text refutes the notion that time and exercise can somehow create willpower from nothing or enlarge a small spark into a powerful force. Critics who claim that willpower grows through time are likened to pseudo-scientists who foolishly argue that the universe emerged from nothingness through the passage of eons. Time is not an active force, but merely a measure of duration during which real factors operate. The author concludes that willpower is never created or developed over time, but is instead given to the human soul by God in its complete and unalterable entirety at the moment of creation.