But there are other movements for which the soul itself is responsible as efficient cause, and these are the effects of the spontaneous activity of our free will. These are not prudence temperance, justice, and fortitude. The cardinal virtues are the properties of virtue which immediately flow from its very essence and have nothing to do with anything external. The division which Geulincx makes of humility is one of fundamental importance in his philosophy. It divides his view of the world into two parts-one, the understanding of our relation to the world and the other, the concept of our relation to God.
Humility consists in the knowledge of self and the forsaking of self.
I find in myself nothing that is my own but to know and to will. I therefore must be conscious of all that I do, and that of which I am not conscious is not the product of my own causality. Since then, the movements of my body take place without my knowing how the nervous impulse passes to the muscles and there-causes them to contract I do not cause my own bodily actions. I am therefore a mere spectator of this machine. In it I form naught and renew naught, I neither make anything here nor destroy it.