460 'FREEDOM OF WILL. of these disputes, whether such and such actions are free or no are rather disputes about words then things: And if the world would all agree to confine the words liberty and freedom, to signify nothing but a freedom of choice, a liberty of indifference, or a power to chuse or refuse, which is inconsistent with any necessity of choice, and which must be allowed to be the most usual sense of it, I should be so far from disapproving of it, that I think it would be the best way of speaking and writing. And therefore I give notice here, that I shall chiefly use the word freedom in this sense in the following sections. Ifwe could but always confine every term to one certain determinate idea, we should gain and preserve much clearer ideas of things ; we should make much swifter and larger advances in knowledge ; we should cut off a thousand occasions of mistake, and take away a multitude of controversies. But when we are enquiring what is libertyof freedom, which in the present sense and use of the word among mankind is applied to various cases, we must not explain the word so as utterly to exclude any spontaneous actions, or actions of the will, which men have frequently called free, though they also may appear necessary, or in some sense constrained. Among other remarks on this subject, it is proper also to take notice, that our judging concerning the truth or falsehood, fitness or unfitness, good or evil of things, is generally ascribed to that power of the soul which is called the mind or understanding: And because when we do pass a judgment, we have no power to judge otherwise than as things appear to the mind at that time, therefore judgment is called a necessary thing ; and indeed " judgment is but an assent or dissent of the mind, as things appear true or false to the mind ;" and on this account it is supposed to have no freedom or liberty belong- ing to it. But if we will make a careful observation of what passes in the transactions of the soul onthese occasions, we shall find that though the mind cannot assent or dissent, cannot judge of things contrary to what they plainly appear, yet the will has a great deal to do in our judgments concerning objects proposed to the mind. The will is sometimes led by appetite or passion, and has an inclination to chuse a particular object, and then it wishes that object to be fit and good : It readily yields to the prejudices that lie on that side, it fixes the mind upon those arguments, which tend to provewhat it wishes, and turns the thoughts away from those evidences, which lie on the other side of the questions and does not suffer them to be brought into full view and com- parison ; and thus secretly it influences the soul to judge the thing it desires tobe good or fit, that is, to assent to those argu- ments, which are brought to prove its fitness, keeping the con- trary arguments much out of sight. It is an old Roman pro-
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