On the other side, a palsy or the
stocks hinder his legs from obeying the determination of his mind,
if it would thereby transfer his body to another place. In all these
there is want of freedom; though the sitting still, even of a
paralytic, whilst he prefers it to a removal, is truly voluntary.
Voluntary, then, is not opposed to necessary, but to involuntary.
For a man may prefer what he can do, to what he cannot do; the state
he is in, to its absence or change; though necessity has made it in
itself unalterable.
12. Liberty, what. As it is in the motions of the body, so it is
in the thoughts of our minds: where any one is such, that we have
power to take it up, or lay it by, according to the preference of
the mind, there we are at liberty. A waking man, being under the
necessity of having some ideas constantly in his mind, is not at
liberty to think or not to think; no more than he is at liberty,
whether his body shall touch any other or no: but whether he will
remove his contemplation from one idea to another is many times in his
choice; and then he is, in respect of his ideas, as much at liberty as
he is in respect of bodies he rests on; he can at pleasure remove
himself from one to another. But yet some ideas to the mind, like some
motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot
avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use.
Pages:
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340