Every one
would laugh at the absurdity of such a question as either of these:
because it is obvious that the modifications of motion belong not to
sleep, nor the difference of figure to virtue; and when one well
considers it, I think he will as plainly perceive that liberty,
which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an
attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power.
15. Volition. Such is the difficulty of explaining and giving
clear notions of internal actions by sounds, that I must here warn
my reader, that ordering, directing, choosing, preferring, &c.,
which I have made use of, will not distinctly enough express volition,
unless he will reflect on what he himself does when he wills. For
example, preferring, which seems perhaps best to express the act of
volition, does it not precisely. For though a man would prefer
flying to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it? Volition, it is
plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting that dominion it takes
itself to have over any part of the man, by employing it in, or
withholding it from, any particular action. And what is the will,
but the faculty to do this? And is that faculty anything more in
effect than a power; the power of the mind to determine its thought,
to the producing, continuing, or stopping any action, as far as it
depends on us? For can it be denied that whatever agent has a power to
think on its own actions, and to prefer their doing or omission either
to other, has that faculty called will? Will, then, is nothing but
such a power.
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