id,comments,provenance,dictionary,created_at,reviewed_on,work_id,theme,context,updated_at,metaphor,text
19088,"",Reading in Google Books,"",2011-08-24 03:16:51 UTC,,7066,"",Essay XV,2011-08-24 03:16:51 UTC,"""A river may as soon be made to flow back to its fountain, as volitions can be exempted from the necessitating influence of motives.""","In this chapter there is much extraneous matter; and Mr. Locke wanders frequently from the subject he professes to discuss, to which he never reverts without great apparent reluctance: but though there are in his digressive observations very objectionable passages, I shall confine my remarks to those arguments and assertions which bear an immediate relation to the point. ""Liberty,"" says Mr. Locke , sect. 8. ""is a power in any agent to do or to forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind."" This definition is consonant to the popular view of the subject; and it may be called practical Liberty, which no Philosopher ever pretended to call in question. Metaphysical Liberty is a power of forming opposite determinations in the same precise situation. A man in any given circumstances may undoubtedly act as he wills or pleases; but then the act, whatever it be, is a definite act, and in the same precise previous circumstances the same act would invariably take place; for the act results from the previous circumstances, and perfect uniformity in the cause must produce perfect uniformity in the effect. Whatever the ignorant or the vulgar may fancy, therefore, throughout the entire series of causes and effects, nothing could possibly have happened different from what has actually taken place. The course of events is fixed and immutable, and thoughts, volitions, and actions, proceed in one uninterrupted concatenation from the beginning to the end of time, agreeably to the laws originally established by the great Creator; and it is as impossible to disturb the regular progression of causes and effects in the mental as in the material world. A river may as soon be made to flow back to its fountain, as volitions can be exempted from the necessitating influence of motives.
(pp. 275-6)"
19089,"",Reading in Google Books,"",2011-08-24 03:18:57 UTC,,7066,"",Essay XV,2011-08-24 03:18:57 UTC,"""[I]t follows that motives, volitions, and actions, are all the definite effects of definite causes, and that they are all links of that // ---- ""golden everlasting chain, / Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main.""","""But the next thing demanded, says Mr. Locke, sect. 25. is, Whether a man be at liberty to will which of the two he pleases, motion or rest?"" A question of which the absurdity is manifest. It is to ask, Whether a man can will what he wills, or be pleased with what he is pleased with?--A question which needs no answer."" True; and it is a question, therefore, which Mr. Locke might have spared himself the trouble of proposing. It is self-evident, that man has the liberty or rather the power to will that which he wills; and all that the Necessitarians pretend is, that man has not the Liberty or power of willing that which he does not will. ""In this, then,"" he repeats, sect. 28. ""consists freedom; in our being able to act or not to act, according as we shall chuse or will."" Thus far then Mr. Locke coincides with the advocates for philosophical Necessity, though his concessions are generally involved in a cloud of words; and he is still desirous, as it should seem, of ranking amongst the friends of philosophical Liberty. Our actions he allows to be necessarily determined by our volitions. He now goes on to ask, sect. 29. ""What determines the will?"" To which he answers, ""The mind or the intelligent agent itself, exerting its power this or that particular way; or, more explicitly, the mind is determined by motives grounded upon feelings of satisfaction or uneasiness."" This account is entirely consistent with the system of Necessity; for the advocates of that hypothesis insist as strongly as Mr. Locke, that our actions are the result of our volitions, which are themselves produced by motives, or by the mind actuated by a regard to motives; and as those motives were themselves produced by causes previously existing, it follows that motives, volitions, and actions, are all the definite effects of definite causes, and that they are all links of that
---- ""golden everlasting chain,
""Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main.""
(pp. 280-1)"