instance satisfactory, it is necessary to attend to the various significations of the word liberty; for the sense in which Hobbes has defined it is only one of its acceptations, and by no means the sense in which it ought to be employed in this controversy.1

1. Liberty is opposed to confinement of the body by superior force, as when a person is shut up in a prison. It is in this sense that Hobbes uses the word; for he tells us that liberty consists only in a power to act as we will. And if the word had no other acceptation, the objection now stated would be a valid one; for as the will cannot be confined by any external force, neither can we with propriety ascribe to the will that species of liberty which is opposed to such confinement.

2. Liberty is opposed to the restraints on human conduct arising from law and government; as when we say, that, by entering into a political society, a man gives up part of his natural liberty. In this sense liberty undoubtedly extends to the determinations of the will; and the very obligations which are opposed to it proceed on the supposition that the will is free. The establishment of law does not abridge this freedom, but, on the contrary, it takes for granted that we have it in our power to obey or to transgress; proposing to us on the one hand, the motives of duty and of interest; and setting before us, on the other, the consequences of wilful transgression.

3. Liberty is opposed to necessity; and it is in this sense the word is employed, when we say that man is a free and accountable being, and that the connexion between motives and actions is not a necessary connexion, like that between cause and effect. This species of liberty has been called by some Moral Liberty.

That there is nothing inconceivable in this idea, appears, I hope, sufficiently from what has been already said. And indeed it is so far from being a metaphysical refinement or subtlety, that the common sense of mankind pronounces men to be accountable for their conduct, only in so far as they are 1 Reid, On the Active Powers, pp. 272, 273, 4to edit. [Essay IV. ch. i.— Works, p. 601.]

understood to be morally free. Whence is it that we consider the pain of the rack as an alleviation of the falsehoods extorted from the criminal? Plainly because the motives presented to him are supposed to be such as no ordinary degree of self-command is able to resist. And if we were only satisfied that these motives were perfectly irresistible, we would not ascribe to him any guilt at all.

As an additional confirmation of Hobbes's doctrine, it has been urged that human laws require no more to constitute a crime but that it be voluntary; and hence it has been inferred, that the criminality consists in the determination of the will, whether that determination be free or necessary.

The case just referred to affords a sufficient refutation of this argument. The confession of the criminal is surely voluntary in the strict acceptation of that term; and yet we consider his guilt as alleviated, in the same proportion in which we suppose his moral liberty to be abridged.

It is true that in most cases human laws require no more to constitute a crime but that it be voluntary; because, in general, motives are placed beyond the cognizance of earthly tribunals. But, in a moral view, merit and demerit suppose not only actions to be voluntary, but the agent to be possessed of moral liberty. And even earthly tribunals judge on the same principle, wherever it can be made appear that the person accused was deprived of the power of self-government by insanity, or by some accidental paroxysm of passion.

I shall only mention one other argument in favour of the scheme of Necessity; and I have reserved for it the last place, as it has been proposed with all the confidence of mathematical demonstration by a writer of no less note than Mr. Belsham. It is in the form of a reductio ad absurdum; and its more immediate object is to expose to ridicule the consequences. which necessarily flow from the doctrine of Free-will.

The argument is this:-" According to the hypothesis of Free-will, the essence of virtue and vice consists in liberty. . . For example: benevolence without liberty is no virtue; malignity without liberty is no vice. Both are equally in a neutral

state. Add a portion of liberty to both; benevolence instantly becomes an eminent virtue, and malignity an odious vice. That is, IF TO EQUALS YOU ADD EQUALS, THE WHOLES WILL BE UNEQUAL. . . Than which nothing can be more absurd.”1

On this reasoning, to which it would be unjust to deny the merit of complete originality, I have no comment to offer. I have quoted it chiefly as a specimen of the logical and mathematical skill of the present advocates for the doctrine of philosophical necessity. In this point of view, it forms an amusing contrast to the lofty pretensions of a sect, which prides itself not only on its superiority to vulgar prejudices, but on its sagacity in detecting a fraud so successfully practised on the rest of mankind, by the author of their moral constitution.

If the foregoing remarks be well founded, the only two opinions which, in the actual state of metaphysical science, ought to be stated in contrast, are that of Liberty (or Free-will) on the one side, and that of Necessity on the other. As to the Liberty of Spontaneity, (which expresses a fact altogether foreign to the point in question,) I can conceive no motive for inventing such a phrase, but a desire in some writers to veil the scheme of Necessity from their readers, under a language less revolting to the sentiments of mankind; and in others an anxiety to banish it as far as possible from their own thoughts, by substituting, instead of the terms in which it is commonly expressed, a circumlocution which seems, on a superficial view, to concede something to the advocates for Liberty.

The phrase Liberty of Indifference, which has been so frequently substituted, (particularly since the time of Leibnitz,) for the older, simpler, and much more intelligible phrase of Free-will, is, in my opinion, not less objectionable than the Liberty of Spontaneity. It certainly conveys but a very inadequate notion of the thing meant ;-the power, to wit, of

1 Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind, and of Moral Philosophy, &c., by Thomas Belsham: [Lond. 1801, (only edition?)] pp. 258, 259. [See Magee's Works, 1842, Vol. II. p. 62.]

2 Both phrases are favourite expres

sions with Lord Kames in his discussions on this subject. Sec in particular the Appendix to his Essay on Liberty and Necessity, in the last [or third] edition of his Essays on Morality and Natural Religion.

choice or election; and that not only among things indifferent, but (a fortiori) between right and wrong, good and evil.

The distinction between Physical and Moral Necessity I conceive to be not less frivolous than those to which the foregoing animadversions relate. On this point I agree with Diderot's assertion, in a passage to be quoted afterwards, that the word Necessity (as it ought to be understood in this dispute) admits but of one interpretation.*

SECT. IV. ARGUMENT FOR NECESSITY, PROPOSED BY LEIBNITZ.

It is well known to all who have any acquaintance with the history of modern philosophy, that one of the fundamental principles of the Leibnitian system is, "that nothing exists without a Sufficient Reason why it should be so, and not otherwise." Of this principle the following succinct account is given by Leibnitz himself in his controversial correspondence with Dr. Clarke:" The great foundation of Mathematics is the principle of Contradiction or Identity; that is, that a proposition cannot be true and false at the same time. But in order to proceed from Mathematics to Natural Philosophy, another principle is requisite, (as I have observed in my Theodicca,) I mean the principle of the Sufficient Reason; or, in other words, that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so rather than otherwise. And accordingly, Archimedes was obliged, in his book De Equilibrio, to take for granted, that, if there be a balance in which everything is alike on both sides, and if equal weights are hung on the two ends of that balance, the whole will be at rest. It is because no reason can be given why one side should weigh down rather than the other. Now by this single principle of the Sufficient Reason, may be demonstrated the Being of a God, and all the other parts of metaphysics or natural theology; and even in some measure those physical truths that are independent upon mathematics, such as the dynamical principles, or the principles of force."+

*[See Section Fifth.]

† [(Des Maizeaux's) Collection of Papers, &c. ;—Leibnitz's S.cond Paper.]

Some of the inferences deduced by Leibnitz from this almost gratuitous assumption are so paradoxical, that one cannot help wondering he was not staggered about its certainty. Not only was he led to conclude that the mind is necessarily determined in all its elections by the greatest apparent good, insomuch that it would be impossible for it to make a choice between two things perfectly alike; but he had the boldness to extend this conclusion to the Deity, and to assert, that two things perfectly alike could not have been produced even by Divine Power. It was upon this ground that he rejected a vacuum, because all the parts of it would be perfectly like to each other; and that he also rejected the supposition of atoms, or similar particles of matter, and ascribed to each particle a monad, or active principle, by which it is discriminated from every other particle. The application of his principle, however, on which he evidently valued himself the most, was that to which I have already alluded,—the demonstrative evidence with which he conceived it to establish the impossibility of free-agency, not only in man, but in any other intelligent being;1 a conclusion which, under whatever form of words it may be disguised, is liable to every objection which can be urged against the system of Spinoza.

1 The following comment on this part of the Leibnitian system is from the pen of one of his greatest admirers, Charles Bonnet:-"Cette métaphysique transcendante deviendra un peu plus intelligible, si l'on fait attention, qu'en vertu du principe de la raison suffisante, tout est nécessairement lié dans l'univers. Toutes les actions des êtres simples sont harmoniques, ou subordonnées les unes aux autres. L'exercice actuel de l'activité d'une monade donnée, est déterminé par l'exercice actuel de l'activité des monades auxquelles elle corresponde immédiatement. Cette correspondance continue d'un point quelconque de l'univers jusqu'à ses extrémités. Représentez vous les ondes circulaires et concentriques qu'une pierre excite dans une eau dormante. Elles