Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/25

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Human Liberty.
21

may be another way, or different; yet each choice being founded on what is judged best, the one for one reason, and the other for another, is equally necessary; and good or bad reasons, hasty or deliberate thoughts, fancy or deliberation, make no difference.

In the same manner,[1] Bishop Bramhall, who has written several books for Liberty, and pretends to assert the Liberty taught by Aristotle, defines Liberty thus: He says, That act which makes a Man’s actions to be truly free, is election; which is the deliberate chusing or refusing of this or that means, or the acceptation of one means before another, where divers are represented by the understanding. And that this definition places Liberty wholly in chusing the seeming best means, and not in chusing the seeming worst means, equally with the best; will appear from the following passages. He says,[2] actions done in sudden and violent passions, are not free; because there is no deliberation nor election.—To say the will is determined by motives, that is,[3] by reasons or discourses, is as much as to say that the Agent is determin’d by himself, or is free. Because motives determine not naturally, but moral-

  1. Bp. Bramhall’s. Works, p. 735.
  2. p. 697.
  3. p. 702.