Every one, I think,
finds in himself a power to begin or forbear, continue or put an end
to several actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of
this power of the mind over the actions of the man, which everyone
finds in himself, arise the ideas of liberty and necessity.
8. Liberty, what. All the actions that we have any idea of
reducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, viz. thinking and
motion; so far as a man has power to think or not to think, to move or
not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind,
so far is a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are
not equally in a man's power; wherever doing or not doing will not
equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there
he is not free, though perhaps the action may be voluntary. So that
the idea of liberty is, the idea of a power in any agent to do or
forbear any particular action, according to the determination or
thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other:
where either of them is not in the power of the agent to be produced
by him according to his volition, there he is not at liberty; that
agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is
no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought, there
may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty.
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