about, and at length determined upon; and because, when done, it is done in accordance with the determination of the agent, it may be called Voluntary or Volitional. But it cannot be called a free action, unless the agent, at the time when he determined to do it, had power to determine not to do it. After he had determined to do the action, the doing of it, if he was free from co-action, would follow as a matter of course. But the question is, was he free from necessity? When he determined to do the action, had he power to have determined not to do it? They who maintain that man is a Free agent say he had; they who maintain that man is a Necessary agent say he had not.

"By the Liberty of a Moral agent," said Dr. Reid (Act. Pow., Essay iv. ch. 1), "I understand a power over the determinations of his own will. If in any action he had power to will what he did, or not to will it, in that action he is free. But if, in every voluntary action, the determination of his will be the necessary consequence of something involuntary in the state of his mind, or of something in his external circumstances, he is not free; he has not what I call the Liberty of a Moral agent, but is subject to necessity."

According to Hobbes, a Free agent is "one that can do if he will, and forbear if he will." And Edwards has said (Inquiry respecting Freedom of Will, pt. i. sect. 5), “power and opportunity for one to do and conduct as he will, or according to his choice, is all that is meant by Liberty; without taking into the meaning of the word anything of the cause or original of that choice, or at all considering how the person came to have such a volition, whether it was caused by some external motive or habitual internal bias; whether it was determined by some internal antecedent volition, or whether it happened without a cause; whether it was necessarily connected with something foregoing, or not connected. Let the person come by his volition or choice how he will, yet if he is able, and there is nothing in the way, to hinder his pursuing and executing his will, the man is fully and perfectly free, according to the primary notion of freedom."

Without descending to any differences between the several theories as to Liberty and Necessity, or in the mode of expressing them, the point in question may be stated, with sufficient precision, thus:Whether the same agent, in the same circumstances, can only frame one and the same volition, and follow one and the same course of conduct; or whether he may frame a different volition, and follow a

different course of conduct? And this statement may be made more plain by putting a case in illustration.

Macbeth murdered King Duncan.

They who maintain that man is a Free agent maintain, that the determination or exercise of Will which preceded this act was not the necessary nor inevitable consequence of anything involuntary in the state of mind, or in the external circumstances of the agent; but that, the state of mind and circumstances antecedent being the same, he had power to have framed a contrary volition, and, instead of embruing his hands in the blood of his sovereign, to have preserved untainted his loyalty and innocence.

They who maintain that man is a Necessary agent, while they denominate the act of murder a free act, as it was done in consequence of a volition or exercise of will, maintain that this particular volition was the necessary result of the mental state of the agent, and of the motives which influenced him; and that, with his ambitious views and weak principles, Macbeth could have framed no volition, and followed no course of conduct, but that which issued in the murder of King Duncan. The action may be called free, in so far as it was voluntary; but the agent was a necessary agent, because guided and influenced by views and feelings which he could not counteract nor resist.

CHAPTER IX.

ARGUMENTS FOR LIBERTY.

THE chief arguments adduced to prove that man is endowed with moral Liberty are the following:

I. "We have, by our constitution, a natural conviction or belief that we act freely-a conviction so early, so universal, and so necessary in most of our rational operations, that it must be the result of our constitution, and the work of Him that made us."

"We have, in truth, the same constant and necessary consciousness of liberty that we have that we think, choose, will, or even exist; and whatever to the contrary any persons may say, it is impossible for them in earnest to think they have no active, self-moving powers, and

are not the causes of their own volitions, or not to ascribe to themselves what they must be conscious they think and do."-Price, Review, pp. 306-7; Descartes, Prin. Phil., pars i. sect. 29; Dugald Stewart, Works, vol. vi. p. 40.

This argument has been called the argument from Consciousness; and some have expressed themselves in reference to it as if Consciousness testified directly to the fact that we are Free agents. But Dr. Reid, in whose words the argument is stated above, did not so regard it. He has said (Act. Pow., Essay i. ch. 1), "We have very early, from our constitution, a conviction or belief of some active power in ourselves. This belief, however, is not Consciousness, for we may be deceived in it; but the testimony of Consciousness can never deceive. Thus, a man who is struck with a palsy in the night commonly knows not that he has lost the power of speech till he attempts to speak: he knows not whether he can move his hands and arms till he makes the trial; and if, without making trial, he consults his Consciousness ever so attentively,' it will give him no information whether he has lost these powers or still retains them."

But, although Consciousness may not testify directly to the fact that we are Free agents, it furnishes evidence in support of that fact. So clear and strong is this evidence that the conviction of being free has been regarded as one of the communes notitiæ, or universal beliefs, which are naturally embraced by the human mind. Buffier (Of First Truths, pt. i. ch. 7, nos. 59, 60, 61, 62) has set down the proposition, That man is truly free as a first truth—a common sentiment-resting on the common sense of mankind. Dr. Reid has put our natural conviction of Free agency on the same ground of evidence "as our belief of the existence of a material world; our belief that those we converse with are living and intelligent beings; our belief that those things did really happen which we distinctly remember; and our belief that we continue the same identical persons," (Act. Pow., Essay 4, ch. 6). Dr. Samuel Clarke (Reply to Collins) has remarked, "That all our actions do now in experience seem to us to be free, exactly in the same manner as they would do upon the supposition of our being really Free agents. And though this alone does not amount to a strict demonstration of our being free, yet it leaves on the other side of the question nothing

1 A man cannot be conscious of acting freely "without making trial." But before

acting, may he not be conscious of freely determining to act?

but a bare possibility of our being so framed by the Author of nature as to be unavoidably deceived in this matter, by every experience and every action we perform. The case is exactly the same" (continues Dr. Clarke) "as in that notable question, Whether the world exist or no? There is no demonstration of it from experience. There always remains a bare possibility that the Supreme Being may have so framed my mind as that I shall always necessarily be deceived in every one of my perceptions as in a dream, though possibly there be no material world, nor any other creature whatsoever existing besides myself. Of this, I say, there always remains a bare possibility; and yet no man in his senses argues from thence, that experience is no proof to us of the existence of things."

D'Alembert has made a similar comparison, and has said (Melanges, tom. iv. no. 7) that "the only proof of which this truth [of free agency] admits is analogous to that of the existence of external objects." Beings really free could not have a more lively feeling of their freedom than that which we have of ours. We ought, therefore, to believe that we are free."

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The testimony of Consciousness may be examined at three different stages. 1. Before we enter upon an action or course of conduct; 2. While we are performing an action, or following out a course of conduct; and, 3. After we have completed the one or the other. And it is argued, that, at all these different stages, the testimony of Consciousness is in favour of the conviction or belief that we are free.

To use the words of Bishop Butler (Analogy, pt. i. ch. 6), "It may justly be concluded, that since the whole process of action, through every step of it, suspense, deliberation, inclining one way, determining, and at last doing as we determine, is as if we were free; therefore we are so." Even Kant has said, "Whatever individual cannot, from the constitution of his nature, but act under the idea of freedom, is, on that very account, in a practical relation free."

This reasoning has been challenged and redargued in more ways than one.

Spinoza (Ethic., pars i., Append., p. 34) contended "that the ground on which men think themselves to be free, is, that they are conscious of their desires and volitions, but ignorant of the causes predisposing them to desire and will." In another passage (Ethic.,

pars ii. p. 73) he has said, "Men are deceived in thinking themselves free-a belief which rests only on this, that, while they are conscious of their actions, they are ignorant of the causes by which they are determined." See also p. 99, and Epist., no. 62, p. 58, where he has said, "that a drunk man believes that he utters freely things which, when sober, he kept secret."

To the same purpose Leibnitz has said (Opera, tom. i. p. 155), "The argument of Descartes to prove the independence of our free actions drawn from an alleged lively internal feeling of it, has no force. We are not properly conscious of our independence, nor do we always perceive the reasons of our choice, as they sometimes are incognizable. It is as if the magnetic needle 2 should exult in pointing to the pole; and should think that it did so independently of any cause, as it did not perceive the insensible movements of the magnetic fluid.”

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Lord Kames, on the ground of the principle of causality, adopted the doctrine of necessity; yet he admitted that we have a natural conviction or belief that we act freely. "Though man in truth is a necessary agent; yet, this being concealed from him, he acts with the conviction of being a free agent." The conviction or belief is not founded on the truth and reality of things, but it is given for wise and good ends. "It appears most fit and wise that we should be endued with a sense of liberty; without which man must have been ill qualified for acting his present part. That artificial light, in which the feeling of liberty presents the moral world to our view, answers all the good purposes of making the actions of man entirely dependent upon himself. His happiness and misery appear to be in his own power. He appears praiseworthy or culpable, according as he improves or neglects his rational faculties. The idea of his being an accountable creature arises. Reward seems due to merit; punishment to crimes. He feels the force of moral obligation. In short, new passions arise, and a variety of new springs are set in motion, to make way for new exertions of reason and activity: in all which, though man is really actuated by laws of necessary influence, yet he seems to move himself; and whilst the universal system is gradually carried on to perfection by the first mover, that powerful hand which winds up and directs the great machine is never brought

2 Bayle had previously given the illustration of a conscious weathercock; and Spinoza that of a stone acquiring con

sciousness, as it was moving, in cas quence of motion having been com nicated to it.