But the fault has been, that
faculties have been spoken of and represented as so many distinct
agents. For, it being asked, what it was that digested the meat in our
stomachs? it was a ready and very satisfactory answer to say, that
it was the digestive faculty. What was it that made anything come
out of the body? the expulsive faculty. What moved? the motive
faculty. And so in the mind, the intellectual faculty, or the
understanding, understood; and the elective faculty, or the will,
willed or commanded. This is, in short, to say, that the ability to
digest, digested; and the ability to move, moved; and the ability to
understand, understood. For faculty, ability, and power, I think,
are but different names of the same things: which ways of speaking,
when put into more intelligible words, will, I think, amount to thus
much;- That digestion is performed by something that is able to
digest, motion by something able to move, and understanding by
something able to understand. And, in truth, it would be very
strange if it should be otherwise; as strange as it would be for a man
to be free without being able to be free.
21. But to the agent, or man. To return, then, to the inquiry
about liberty, I think the question is not proper, whether the will be
free, but whether a man be free. Thus, I think,
First, That so far as any one can, by the direction or choice of his
mind, preferring the existence of any action to the non-existence of
that action, and vice versa, make it to exist or not exist, so far
he is free.
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