Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/51

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Human Liberty.
47

But let us put a case of true equality or Indifference, and what I have asserted will more manifestly appear true. Let two eggs appear perfectly alike to a man; and let him have no will to eat or use eggs. (For so the case ought to be put, to render things perfectly indifferent to him; because, if once a will to eat eggs be suppos'd, that will must necessarily introduce a train of causes which will ever destroy an equality of circumstances in relation to the things which are the objects of our choice. There will soon follow a second will to eat one first. And these two wills must put the man upon action, and the usages of the parts of his body to obtain his end; which parts are determin'd in their motions either by some habitual practice or by some particular circumstance at that time, and cause the man to chuse and take one of them first rather than the other.) The case of equality being thus rightly stated, I say, it is manifest no choice would or could be made; and the Man is visibly prevented in the beginning from making a choice. For every man experiences, that before he can make a choice among eggs, he musthave