foon as the mind regains the power to ftop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these motions of the body without, or thoughts within, according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then confider the man as a free agent again.

13. Neceffity, what.

WHEREVER thought is wholly wanting, or the power to act or forbear according to the direction of thought, there neceffity takes place. This, in an agent capable of volition, when the beginning or continuation of any action is contrary to that preference of his mind, is called compulfion; when the hindering or stopping any action is contrary to his volition, it is called reftraint. Agents that have no thought, no volition at all, are in every thing necessary agents.

§14. Liberty belongs not to the Will.

If this be fo (as I imagine it is), I leave it to be confidered, whether it may not help to put an end to that long agitated, and I think unreasonable, because unin telligible queftion, viz. Whether man's will be free or no? For if I mistake not, it follows from what I have faid, that the question itself is altogether improper; and it is as infignificant to afk, whether man's will be free, as to afk, whether his fleep be fwift, or his virtue fquare; liberty being as little applicable to the will as fwiftnefs of motion is to fleep, or fquarenefs to virtue. Every one would laugh at the abfurdity of fuch a question as either of thefe, because it is obvious that the modifications of motion belong not to fleep, nor the difference of figure to virtue; and when any one well confiders it, I think he will as plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power.

§ 15. Volition.

SUCH is the difficulty of explaining and giving clear notions of internal actions by founds, that I must here warn my reader, that ordering, directing, choofing, preferring, &c. which I have made ufe of, will not distinctly enough exprefs volition, unless he will reflect on what

he himself does when he wills. For example, preferring, which feems perhaps beft to exprefs the act of volition, does it not precifely; for though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can fay he ever wills it? Volition, it is plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employing it in or withholding it from any particular action. And what is the will but the faculty to do this? And is that faculty any thing more in effect than a power, the power of the mind to determine its thought to the producing, continuing, or stopping any action, as far as it depends on us? For can it be denied, that whatever agent has a power to think on its own actions, and to prefer their doing or omiffion either to other, has that faculty called will? Will, then, is nothing but fuch a power. Liberty, on the other fide, is the power a man has to do or forbear doing any particular action, according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in the mind; which is the fame thing as to fay, according as he himself wills it.

16. Powers belong to Agents.

IT is plain, then, that the will is nothing but one power or ability, and freedom another power or ability; so that to ask, whether the will has freedom, is to afk, whether one power has another power, one ability another ability; a question at first fight too grofsly abfurd to make a dispute, or need an anfwer; for who is it that fees not that powers belong only to agents, and are attributes only of fubftances, and not of powers themselves? So that this way of putting the queftion, viz. Whether the will be free? is in effect to afk, Whether the will be a fubftance, an agent? or at leaft to fuppofe it, fince freedom can properly be attributed to nothing elfe. If freedom can with any propriety of speech be applied to power, it may be attributed to the power that is in a man to produce or forbear producing motion in parts of his body by choice or preference, which is that which denominates him free, and is freedom itself. But if any one should ask, whether freedom were free,

he would be fufpected not to understand well what he faid; and he would be thought to deserve Midas's ears, who knowing that rich was a denomination from the poffeffion of riches, fhould demand whether riches. themselves were rich.

$17.

HOWEVER the name faculty, which men have given to this power called the will, and whereby they have been led into a way of talking of the will as acting, may, by an appropriation that difguifes its true fenfe, ferve at little to palliate the abfurdity; yet the will in truth fignifies nothing but a power, or ability, to prefer or choose; and when the will, under the name of a faeulty, is confidered as it is, barely as an ability to do: fomething, the abfurdity in saying it is free, or not free, will eafily difcover itfelf: For if it be reafonable: to suppose and talk of faculties, as diftinct beings that can act (as we do when we say the will orders, and the will is free), it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which thofe actions are produced, which are but several modes of motion; as well as we make the will and underftanding to be faculties, by which the actions of choofing and perceiving are produced, which are but several modes of thinking; and we may as properly fay, that it is the finging faculty fings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that the will chooses, or that the understanding conceives; or, as is ufual, that the will directs the: understanding, or the understanding obeys, or obeys not the will; it being altogether as proper and intelligible. to fay, that the power of speaking directs the power of: finging, or the power of finging obeys or difobeys the: power of speaking.

$18.

THIS way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed, and, as: I guefs, produced great confufion: For these being all: - different powers in the mind, or in the man, to do several actions, he exerts them as he thinks fit. But the. power. to do one action, is not operated on by the power of doing another action; for the power of thinking. operates

not on the power of choofing, nor the power of choofing on the power of thinking, no more than the power of dancing operates on the power of finging, or the power of finging on the power of dancing, as any one who reflects on it will eafily perceive; and yet this is it which we fay, when we thus fpeak, that the will operates on the understanding, or the understanding on the will.

$ 19.

I GRANT, that this or that actual thought may be the occafion of volition, or exercifing the power a man has to choofe; or the actual choice of the mind, the cause of actual thinking on this or that thing; as the actual finging of fuch a tune, may be the occafion of dancing fuch a dance, and the actual dancing of such a dance the occafion of finging fuch a tune. But in all these it is not one power that operates on another; but it is the mind that operates, and exerts these powers; it is the man that does the action, it is the agent that has or is able to do: For powers are relations, not agents; and that which has the power or not the power to operate, is that alone which is or is not free, and not the power itfelf: For freedom, or not freedom, can belong to nothing but what has or has not a power to act.

§ 20. Liberty belongs not to the Will.

power,

THE attributing to faculties that which belonged not to them, has given occafion to this way of talking; but the introducing into difcourfes concerning the mind, with the name of faculties, a notion of their operating, has, I fuppofe, as little advanced our knowledge in that part of ourfelves, as the great use and mention of the like invention of faculties, in the operations of the body, has helped us in the knowledge of phyfic. Not that I deny there are faculties, both in the body and mind; they both of them have their powers of operating, elfe neither the one nor the other could operate; for nothing can operate that is not able to operate; and that is not able to operate, that has no power to operate. Nor do I deny that thofe words, and the like, are to have their place in the common use of lan

guages, that have made them current. It looks like too much affectation wholly to lay them by; and philofophy itself, though it likes not a gaudy drefs, yet, when it appears in public, must have fo much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fafhion and language of the country, fo far as it can confift with truth and perfpicuity. But the fault has been, that faculties have been spoken of and reprefented as so many diftinct agents; for it being afked, What it was that digefted the meat in our ftomachs? it was a ready and very fatisfactory answer to say, that it was the digeftive faculty. What was it that made any thing come out of the body? The expulfive faculty. What moved? The motive faculty. And fo in the mind, the intellectual faculty, or the understanding understood, and the elective faculty, or the will willed or commanded; which is in fhort to say, that the ability to digeft, digefted; and the ability to move, moved; and the ability to understand, underftood; for faculty, ability, and power, I think, are but different names of the fame things; which ways of fpeaking, when put into more intelligible words, will, I think, amount to thus much, that digeftion is performed by fomething that is able to digeft, motion by fomething able to move, and understanding by fomething able to understand. And in truth it would be very strange if it fhould be otherwife, as ftrange as it would be for a man to be free without being able to be free.

§ 21. But to the Agent or Man.

To return then to the inquiry about liberty, I think the question is not proper, Whether the will be free? but, Whether a man be free? Thus, I think,

1. That fo far as any one can, by the direction or choice of his mind preferring the existence of any action to the non-existence of that action, and vice verfa make it to exift or not exist, so far he is free; for if I can, by a thought directing the motion of my finger, make it move when it was at reft, or vice verfa, it is evident that in refpect of that I am free; and if I can, by a like thought of my mind preferring one