of the man, which every one finds in himself, arise tha ideas of liberty and necessity." These definitions, how- ever, merely extend to the ability of the individual to execute his own purposes without obstruction ; where- as Locke, in order to do justice to his own decided opinion on the subject, ought to have included also in his idea of liberty a power over the determinations of the wiU. " By the liberty of a moral agent," says Dr. Keid, " I understand a power over the determinations of his own will. If, in any action, he had power to will what he did, or not to will it, in that action he is free. But if, in every voluntary action, the determination of his will be the necessary consequence of something in- volimtary in the state of his mind, or of something in his external circumstances, he is not free ; he has not what I call the liberty of a moral agent, but is subject to necessity." On the other hand, some affirm that neces- sity is perfectly consistent with human hberty ; that is, that the most strict and inviolable connection of cause and effect does not prevent the full, free, and unrestrain- ed development of certaui powers in the agent, or take away the cUstinction between the nature of virtue and vice, praise and blame, reward and punishment, but is the foundation of all moral reasoning. " I conceive," says Hobbes, " that nothing taketh beginnuig from it- self, but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself; and that therefore, when first a man hath an appetite or will to do something to which im- mediately before he had no appetite nor will, the cause of his wiO is not the wLU itself, but something else not in his own disposing; so that whereas it is out of con- troversy that of voluntary action the will is the neces- sary cause, and by this which is said the will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not, it fol- loweth that voluntary actions have all of them neces- sary causes, and therefore are necessitated. I hold that to be a sufficient cause to which nothing is wanting that is needful to the producing of the effect. The same is also a necessary cause. For if it be possible that a suf- ficient cause shall not bring forth the effect, then there wanteth somewhat which was needful to the jiroducing of it, and so the cause was not sufficient ; but if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the effect, then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause (for that is said to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it). Hence it is manifest that whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it, or else it had not been, and therefore also voluntar}- actions are necessitated." "I conceive liberty," he observes, " to be rightly defined in this manner : Liberty is the absence of all impediments to action that are not con- tained in the nature and uitrinsical quality of the agent : as, for example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way, but not across, because the banks are impediments; and, though the water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants the liberty to ascend, but the faculty or po;ver, because the impediment is in the nature of the water, and intrinsi- cal. So also we say, he that is tied wants the liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him. but in his bands; whereas Ave say not so of him that is sick or lame, because the impediment is in himself. I hold that the ordinary definition of a free agent — namely, that a free agent is that which, when all things are present that are needfid to produce the effect, can nev- ertheless not produce it — implies a contradiction, and is nonsense; being as much as to saj' the cause may be sufficient, that is to say, necessarj^, and yet the effect shall nut follow." He afterwards defines a moral agent to be one that acts from deliberation, choice, or will, not from indifference ; and, speaking of the supposed incon- sistency between choice and necessity, he adds : " Com- monh', when we see and know the strength that moves us, we acknowledge necessity ; but when we do not, or mark not the force that moves us, we then think there is none, and thus conclude that it is not cause, but lib-
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erty, that produceth the action. Hence it is that we are apt to tliink tliat one doth not choose this or that who of necessity chooses it; but we might as well say fire doth not burn because it burns of necessity." The general question is thus stated by Hobbes in the begin- ning of his treatise : the point is not, he says, " whether a man can be a free agent ; that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak or be silent, according to his will, l)ut whether the will to write or the will to for- bear come upon him according to his will, or according to anything else in his power. I acknowledge this lib- erty, that i can do if I will; but to say I can will if 1 will, I take to be an absurd speech. In fine, that free- dom which men commonly find in books, that which the poets chant in the theatres and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the pul- pits and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets, and all mankind in . the whole world, do assent unto, is the same that I as- sent unto, namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will; but whether he hath freedom to will is a question neither the bishop nor they ever thought on." Thus it will readily be perceived that Hobbes entirely denies the main point at issue, namely, the freedom of the will itself, and confines the subject — as his definition — purely to liberty of action. This latter is simply a phijs- ical question, and applies to all agents, whether human, animal, or even material; that liberty which concerns, and indeed constitutes, a being as a moral agent, is quite a different thing. Hobbes as a materialist, and there- fore a necessitarian, of course finds no room for this kind of moral or self-determining power.