a part of our real happinefs, or be confiftent or inconfiftent with it. The refult of our judgment upon that examination is what ultimately determines the man who could not be free if his will were determined by any thing but his own defire, guided by his own judgment. I know that liberty by fome is placed in an indifferency of the man, antecedent to the determination of his will. I wish they who lay fo much ftrefs on fuch an antecedent indifferency, as they call it, had told us plainly, whether this fuppofed indifferency be antecedent to the thought and judgment of the understanding, as well as to the decree of the will. For it is pretty hard to ftate it between them; i. e. immediately after the judgment of the understanding, and before the determination of the will; because the determination of the will immediately follows the judgment of the understanding: and to place liberty in an indifferency, antecedent to the thought and judgment of the understanding, feems to me to place liberty in a state of darknefs, wherein we can neither fee nor fay any thing of it; at leaft it places it in a fubject incapable of it, no agent being allowed capable of liberty, but in confequence of thought and judgment. I am not nice about phrafes, and therefore confent to fay with those that love to speak fo, that liberty is placed in indifferency; but it is an indifferency which remains after the judgment of the understanding: yea, even after the determination of the will: and that is an indifferency, not of the man (for after he has once judged which is beft, viz. to do, or forbear, he is no longer indifferent) but an indifferency of the operative powers of the man, which remaining equally able to operate, or to forbear operating after, as before the decree of the will, are in a ftate, which, if one pleases, may be called indifferency; and as far as this indifferency reaches, á man is free, and no farther: v. g. I have the ability to move my hand, or to let it reft, that operative power is indifferent to move, or not to move my hand: I am then in that respect perfectly free. My will determines that operative power to reft, I am yet free, becaufe the indifferency of that my operative power to act.

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or not to act, still remains; the power of moving my hand is not at all impaired by the determination of my will, which at prefent orders reft; the indifferency of that power to act, or not to act, is just as it was before, as will appear, if the will puts it to the trial, by ordering the contrary. But if, during the rest of my handit be feized by a fudden palfy, the indifferency of that operative power is gone, and with it my liberty; I have no longer freedom in that refpect, but am under a neceffity of letting my hand reft. On the other fide, if my hand be put into motion by a convulfion, the indifferency of that operative faculty is taken away by that motion, and my liberty in that cafe is loft: for I am under a neceffity of having my hand move. have added this, to fhow in what fort of indifferency liberty seems to me to confift, and not in any other, real or imaginary.

$ 72.

I

TRUE notions concerning the nature and extent of lib. erty, are of fo great importance, that I hope I fhall be pardoned this digreffion, which may attempt to explain it has led me into. The idea of will, volition, liberty, and neceffity, in this chapter of power, came naturally in my way. In a former edition of this treatife, I gave an account of my thoughts concerning them, according to the light I then had and now, as a lover of truth, and not a worshipper of my own doctrines, I own fome change of my opinion, which I think I have discovered ground for. In what I firft writ, I, with an unbiaffed indifferency, followed truth, whither I thought she led me. But neither being fo vain as to fancy infallibility, nor fo difingenuous as to diflemble my mistakes, for fear of blemishing my reputation, I have, with the fame fincere defign, for truth only, not been afhamed to publifh what a feverer inquiry has fuggested. It is not impoffible but that fome may think my former notions right, and fome (as I have already found) thefe latter, and fome neither. I fhall not at all wonder at this variety in men's opinions; impartial deductions of reafon in controverted points being fo

very rate, and exact ones in abstract notions not fo very eafy, efpecially if of any length. And therefore I should think myself not a little beholden to any one, who would, upon thefe or any other grounds, fairly clear this fubject of liberty from any difficulties that may yet remain.

Before I close this chapter, it may, perhaps, be to our purpose, and help to give us clearer conceptions about power, if we make our thoughts take a little more exact furvey of action. I have faid above, that we have ideas but of two forts of action, viz. motion and thinking. Thefe, in truth, though called and counted actions, yet, if nearly confidered, will not be found to be always perfectly fo. For, if I mistake not, there are inftances of both kinds, which, upon due confideration, will be found rather paffions than actions, and confequently fo far the effects barely of paffive powers in thofe fubjects, which yet on their account are thought agents. For in thefe inftances, the fubftance that hath motion, or thought, receives the impreffion, whereby it is put into that action, purely from without, and fo acts merely by the capacity it has to receive fuch an impreffion from fome external agent; and fuch a power is not properly an active power, but a mere paffive capacity in the fubject. Sometimes the substance, or agent, puts itself into action by its own power, and this is properly active power. Whatfoever modification a fubftance has, whereby it produces any effect, that is called action : v. g. a solid substance by motion operates on, or alters the fenfible ideas of another fubftance, and therefore this modification of motion we call action. But yet this motion, in that folid fubftance, is, when rightly confidered, but a paffion, if it received it only from fome external agent. So that the active power of motion is in no fubftance which cannot begin motion in itself, or in another fubftance, when at reft. So likewife in thinking, a power to receive ideas or thoughts from the operation of any external fubftance, is called a power of thinking: but this is but a paffive power, or capacity. But to be able to

bring into view ideas out of fight, at one's own choice, and to compare which of them one thinks fit, this is an active power. This reflection may be of fome ufe to preferve us from mistakes about powers and actions, which grammar, and the common frame of languages, may be apt to lead us into fince what is fignified by verbs that grammarians call active, does not always fig-. nify action; v. g. this propofition, I fee the moon, or a ftar, or I feel the heat of the fun, though expreffed by a verb active, does not fignify any action in me, whereby I operate on those substances; but the reception of the ideas of light, roundness, and heat, wherein I am not active, but barely paffive, and cannot in that pofition of my eyes, or body, avoid receiving them. But when I turn my eyes another way, or remove my body out of the funbeams, I am properly active; because of my own choice, by a power within myself, I put myself into that motion. Such an action is the product of active power.

§ 73. Recapitulation.

AND thus I have, in a fhort draught, given a view of our original ideas, from whence all the reft are derived, and of which they are made up; which if I would confider as a philofopher, and examine on what causes they depend, and of what they are made, I believe they all might be reduced to these very few primary and original ones, viz. extenfion, folidity, mobility, or the power of being moved; which, by our fenfes, we receive from body perceptivity, or the power of perception, or thinking; motivity, or the power of moving; which, by reflection, we receive from our minds. I crave leave to make use of these two new words, to avoid the danger of being mistaken in the use of those which are equivocal. To which if we add existence, duration, number, which belong both to the one and the other, we have, perhaps, all the original ideas, on which the reft depend. For by thefe, I imagine, might be explained the nature of colours, founds, taftes, fmells, and all other ideas we have, if we had but faculties acute enough to perceive the feverally modified extenVOL. I. E E

fions and motions of thefe minute bodies, which produce thofe feveral fenfations in us. But my prefent purpose being only to inquire into the knowledge the mind has of things, by thofe ideas and appearances, which God has fitted it to receive from them, and how the mind comes by that knowledge, rather than into their caufes, or manner of production, I fhall not, contrary to the defign of this effay, fet myself to inquire philofophically into the peculiar constitution of bodies, and the configuration of parts, whereby they have the power to produce in us the ideas of their fenfible quali ties: I fhall not enter any farther into that difquifition; it fufficing to my purpose to obferve, that gold or saffron has a power to produce in us the idea of yellow; and fnow or milk, the idea of white; which we can only have by our fight, without examining the texture of the parts of thofe bodies, or the particular figures, or motion of the particles which rebound from them, to caufe in us that particular fenfation: though when we go beyond the bare ideas in our minds, and would inquire into their caufes, we cannot conceive any thing elfe to be in any fenfible object, whereby it produces different ideas in us, but the different bulk, figure, number, texture, and motion of its infenfible parts.

CHAP. XXII.

OF MIXED MODES.

§ 1. Mixed Modes, what.

AVING treated of fimple modes in the foregoing chapters, and given feveral instances of fome of the most confiderable of them, to fhow what they are, and how we come by them, we are now, in the next place, to confider those we call mixed modes; such are the complex ideas we mark by the names obligation, drunkenness, a lie, &c. which, confifting of feveral combinations of fimple ideas, of different kinds, I have called mixed modes, to diftinguish them from the more