the materials he has collected, to the candor of the publick: Not without a pleasing hope that some better hand may undertake and perfect the idea.
[5] THEORY OF AGENCY, &c.
Considering the design’d brevity of the following Essay, any particular examination of what others have written upon the subject, may not be expected: neither that much notice should be taken of the terms they have used, to express their meanings and explain the thing. A few words concerning absolute liberty, and moral freedom, may suffice to introduce the Author’s private way of thinking.
By absolute liberty, a person has been supposed capable of determining differently, all circumstances remaining the same. Coactive necessity is its reverse; and both equally destructive of true liberty: One being absolute will, without any reason for action; the other being acted from without, as a mere machine.
On both sides of the question, it has been firmly believed, that some degree of a self-determining power was necessary to the existence of liberty; on neither side, however, has any one been able to find it; and probably many may have become Fatalists for no other [6] reason, than because they could not conceive of Liberty without it.
By Moral Freedom, has been meant a power of determining according to apprehended good and evil; opposed to a state of moral necessity, either natural, or induced by long custom, habit, passion, or some special depravity; which may be further taken notice of in the sequel: For the present, we may observe, that the question of Liberty turns upon this, viz.
Whether there be any moral power or faculty in the mind, whereby it can occasionally change a prior determination? Wherein this consists? and by what operation of the mind effected?
Preparatory to a solution of this question, we may consider some of the differences between the rational and the sensitive world; together with the nature of what is called the will.
The powers of all creatures are suited to their wants and intentions; and their liberty is of the same nature, and proper to their powers. The brute, with only sensitive powers, and what are called instincts, acts according to these, and without constraint; or as he lists; but cannot have moral freedom; this being the exclusive property of the rational nature. Man has the inherent power of controuling the animal affections, which is denominated moral. So that he is not, as may by [7] and by appear, in all things necessitated. I say in all, because in many things he is so; thus by the constitution of his nature, as a corporeal being; in what life consists; and in some appetites, desires and aversions; but wholly so, till arrived to the use of reason, as in childhood, and at any time of life when reason fails; or the subject criminally neglects the proper use of it.
All appearances evidence that man was form’d for self-direction; since by his intellectual powers he can govern the sensitive clues in the use of proper means; rectify errors in judgment; disengage himself from prejudices; foresee events, and conduct accordingly: All which, by consideration; not by any thing of an absolute intention; the appearances of which are deceitful. The same may be said of the choice of two exactly similar objects, wherein there is no preference. I mention this, because the pitching upon one, instead of the other, has been objected as a proof of free-will: Tho’ the person takes one instead of the other, only to get rid of the difficulty, which is all the motive he has in the case.
But suppose a person could chuse without a motive, (i.e.) with absolute liberty, what would be the wisdom of such a power? To what purpose an unmeaning determination more likely to produce ill than good effects? It is [8] time enough for willing and determination, when some cause, some reason for it appears.
The notion of absolute liberty leads us to enquire into the nature of what is call’d the Will: A thing which, as it seems, has not been rightly understood by the writers in morals. Much has been said of it in the affair of liberty; some have imagined it the first mover in the mind; and long use has associated a notion of something arbitrary in the mental economy, which has occasioned great confusion and obscurity.
The common expression is, that man has a Will; his faults are charg’d on the Will; and his Liberty called Freedom of the Will. Now in these expressions, we have strong intimations of some certain subsistence, faculty, or distinct power in the mind, by which it chuses and refuses, wills and nills, as the terms have been, and which have, as it were, given a sanction to the notion, and prejudiced people against an examination of the thing; whereas by a little observation of what passes in their own minds, almost any one might perceive the mistake.
By looking inwards with respect to will, nothing appears but desire and aversion; and by these, we constantly observe the mind determined; and by no other means. By these, we pursue apprehended good, and avoid evil; our determination wills, or choices, which are [9]* synonimous, are as our desires and aversions; and these, as our perceptions, and the ideas we have of things; or as our external and internal senses are affected. By all which it is evident, that will is no other than the mind determined by motive.
These affections of the mind, determining to action and conduct, are what have been invariably express’d by the term will. And indeed a proper name was necessary, as well as convenient, to prevent tedious and irksome descriptions of the complex idea. The fault has been, that in the name, we have lost the true nature of the thing; we have insensibly taken that for a cause, which was only an effect. Thus much may suffice in a preliminary way. We come now to the enquiry what our Liberty is, and how it originates.
The great Mr. Lock placed it in suspension of the mind, (i.e.) as I suppose, a being duly disposed to determine as evidence should appear. Suspension implies impartiality, and a freedom from byas and prejudice; but it does not solve the difficulty of motive; so that none have receiv’d any real information from [10] it. But it appears that the author himself was not satisfy’d of the existence of Liberty; for in a letter to his friend Molineux, he owns that he could not conceive of Liberty being compatible to the omniscience of the Deity. This no doubt was from a notion of something absolute being necessary to the idea of Liberty; the universal mistake of all the writers in the controversy, on one side as well as on the other, while the thing is so far otherwise, that the mind is evidently passive in every thing it gives attention to, at least it is so in a state of vigilance, since the spirit here strictly observes the laws of its union with the body, though it may be otherwise in sleep. And probably from this effect of the laws of union, the Necessitarians have been induced to rest their cause on the power of motive, and latterly have persuaded themselves that this alone is an effectual bar to liberty.
If, say they, we do nothing without a motive, we cannot by any means have liberty. And they add, that a moral determination no more admits of freedom, than a natural or physical one; in which they plainly make no distinction between the sensitive, and the rational nature. Nor do they better, when they would confirm their doctrine of Fatality, by the sophistical whim of motive depending on motive, in infinitum, (i. e.) that there is no first [11] mover. A notion too puerile to admit of a grave answer, were it not that many sober writers have adopted it, as if it was really to their purpose. But so it is, that in attempting a system of absurdities, one must give an answer to such stuff as this as well as the rest; therefore quo ineptia trahunt, retrahuntque sequamur.
This notion of a boundless series of motives, must have been the offspring of contracted views, as well as the impossibility of tracing them back to a first mover, viz. the external senses in their first affecting the mind; before this, it is to be observed there could be no motive. What chiefly gave occasion to the whim, seems to have been the impossibility of tracing them back to their source. The case is such, that long before we are capable of looking back, our first perceptions in childhood have escaped us. The memory of childhood is not retentive. In infancy the perceptions are seldom retain’d to the next day; tho’ in a short time they may remain two or three risings and settings of the sun; but were it otherwise, in the course of a few years our faculties pass through such a variety of action, associations, improvements, and interweavements of ideas; and too often such actual depravities of our moral powers, that the hundredth part of these may be well thought more than enough to prevent our pursuing the thread of motive back to its original.
[12] But there is yet a way by which we may satisfy ourselves; and that is, by beginning at the first perceptions of the human mind: What these are, we may be assured by