 Lucretius spends most of his argument establishing the premise that animals do, in fact, act freely, by giving two examples. Both examples are supposed to show that animals have an internal capacity to initiate motion, which distinguishes animal motion from the way in which inanimate objects are simply moved around by external blows. The first example is of race horses eager to burst from the starting gates. Lucretius claims that we see a slight delay between the external stimulus of the opening of the gates and the resultant motion of the horses surging forward. This delay supposedly shows that there exists motion initiated by the mind, in which case it takes some time for the decision of the mind to stir together and move all of the matter of the horse. The second example appeals to our own experience, in cases such as being in a jostling crowd: we are not always helplessly shoved around by these outside forces but are sometimes able to fight against them to go where we wish, and we initiate this motion ourselves.