take as nature gave it us; nor can any application increase or diminish our natural talents; we can only lay in a larger stock of materials for them to work upon. Like a man who cuts down a wood to extend his prospect, he does nothing to his eyes nor encreases their power of vision, but only opens a larger field for them to expatiate in.

So what we call exercises of our understanding are in reality exercises of our reason, not the single act of either, but the joint work of both faculties; such as reading, composing, deliberating, contriving, and the like, wherein the mind employs both her powers and certain instruments besides in a series of actions tending to some end proposed. Whereas every notice of our senses, every wild imagination, every start of fancy, every transient object or thought exercises our faculty. What need divines and philosophers exhort us perpetually to use our understandings? Their admonitions were superfluous if they meant the faculty, for this we use without ceasing while awake, nor can we choose but do so. The little master playing at pushpin uses his faculty, for that discovers to him the situation of the pins, and thereby directs his fingers how to shove one across another. When Miss Gawky lolls out at window for hours together to see what passes in the street, she uses her faculty all the while; for by that she discerns the coaches going by, a woman wheeling potatoes in a barrow, or a butcher's apprentice with a dog carrying his empty tray before him. How oddly would it sound to say this pretty trifler makes as much use of her understanding as the laborious patriot, who spends his time and himself in contriving schemes for the public good? Yet we cannot deny her this honor if we speak of the faculty, for both equally furnish that with constant employment. How shall we take these expressions, A man of no understanding, or That has lost his understanding? for the veriest ideot or madman, if he can see and hear and remember and fancy, possesses the faculty of discerning objects in such manner as his senses convey them or his imagination represents them.

14. So likewise the term Will in common acceptation stands for something very different from our active power, as appears evidently by our frequently talking of doing things unwillingly or against our Wills: for the mind has one only active power whereby it brings to pass whatever it performs, nor is it possible to do any one thing without exerting that; therefore it would be highly absurd to talk of acting without or against our Will in this sense.— But by acting against our Will we mean against the liking, against the grain, against the inclination, which being observed to set us commonly at work, for we do most of our actions because we like

them, hence the cause is mistaken for the effect, and the liking gets the name of the power operating to attain it: and if we find inclination drawing one way and obligation or some cogent necessity driving another, our compliance with the latter we call acting against our Will.

If we view this compliance separately in its own light, this also appears to us an act of our Will. Suppose a girl, living with some relation from whom she has large expectations, invited to a ball which she would go to with all her heart, but the old lady thinks it improper; therefore she stays at home, and says she does it sorely against her Will. Ask her whether anybody could have hindered if she had resolved positively upon going. No, says she, but to be sure I would not go when I knew it must have disobliged my aunt: I should have been a great fool if I had. You see here by saying I would not go, she looks upon the staying at home as an act of her Will, and thus the Will appears to act against itself; which were impossible if Will stood for the same thing in both sentences. This leads us to another sense of the word wherein it signifies a dictate of prudence, a judgment or decision of the understanding, whose office it is, not that of the Will, to discern the expedience and propriety of measures proposed for our conduct. But because our judgment many times influences our actions, and perhaps we flatter ourselves it does so always, therefore we denominate it our Will, by a like mistake of the cause for the power working the effect.

Do not we frequently join will and pleasure together as synonymous terms? Now not to insist that pleasure is no action but a feeling of the mind, we use this expression upon occasions wherein it cannot relate to our active power. It is his Majesty's will and pleasure that the parliament should assemble: what has this to do with the faculty of the King? the members must come by their own activity; they derive no motion, nor power of motion from the crown. Oh! but the King must do some act whereby to signify his pleasure, or they will not know what to do in obedience thereto. Who doubts it? But when we speak of will and pleasure we do not understand the act of declaring, nor any power exerted to perform it, but the thing so declared; and what is that but the royal judgment that such assembling will be for his ser

vice.

When we are called upon to curb, to restrain, to deny our Wills, what are we to understand by these exhortations? or how shall we go about to practise them? Why by resolving strongly not to let our Will have its bent. But is it in our power to resolve? Yes, you may pluck up a resolution if you will take pains.

This Will then whereby we form the resolution must be different from that we control : which carries an appearance of two Wills, one counteracting the other. Hence Man has been often represented as containing two persons within him: the old inan and the new, the flesh and the spirit, reason and passion, the intellectual and sensitive soul, Plato's charioteer and pair of horses; each having a Will of its own, perpetually thwarting, contending, and struggling with each other, sometimes one getting the direction of our actions and sometimes the other. Nevertheless when we reflect that these actions are all of our own performance, we are at a nonplus to determine which of these Wills is our own, and which of these persons ourselves.

15. To get rid of the ambiguity clinging to vulgar terms, the words Volition and Velleity have been coined, and applied, one to that Will which gets the mastery, and the other to that controlled thereby. Thus the young lady who excused herself from the invitation had a velleity to go, but a volition to stay away. But velleity can scarce be called a power, for power which never operates is no power at all: Velleity gives birth to none of our motions, it may strive and struggle a little, but volition always carries the day. Our actions constantly follow our volition, such as that is such are they, and what action of those in our power we shall perform depends solely thereupon. Yet neither can we deem volition the same as power, since the one may be where the other is not a man who sits still may have the power to walk, but he has not the volition, and that is the only reason why he does not walk. Again, our powers, as Mr. Locke has shown, are indifferent to every action within their compass: but a perfect indifference is no volition, it produces nothing but a total indolence, nor does volition come until the mind exerts itself upon something. Therefore volition is not so much a power as the turn or direction of our power upon particular occasions: just as the turn of the wind is not a power, but only the direction the wind takes at any time. Yet the clouds constantly follow the turn of the wind, such as that is such are their courses, and it depends solely thereupon to determine whether they shall travel to the east or to the west, to the north or to the south: nevertheless, nobody can think the turn of the wind is the force or power by which the wind carries the clouds along.

16. Nor does there want room to believe that the double sense of the word understanding has given rise to many disputes. Whether the Will always follows the last act of the understanding or no. For observing that we are generally prompted to action by something we discern pleasant or expedient, and being taught,

to look upon every discernment as an exertion of the understanding faculty, we conceive our motions governed by our understanding. Then again finding that common usage, the standard of language, has appropriated understanding to knowledge, judgment, reason, the result of thought or experience from which we too frequently and notoriously swerve in our conduct, we bewilder ourselves in mazes without ever coming to an issue. And when we canvass the point with one another, whichever side of the question we take, it will be easy for an antagonist to produce expressions from authors or persons of undoubted credit proving the contrary. Nor shall we be able to satisfy our opponent or ourselves, because we cannot settle what is properly an act of the understanding, and whether it be the same with an act of the faculty.

Mr. Locke complains of the faculties being spoken of and represented as so many distinct agents: not that I suppose anybody ever seriously believed them such, but by talking frequently of the understanding, discerning, judging, representing things to the mind or determining the Will, and of the Will obeying or disobeying the understanding, or directing our active powers, we slide insensibly into an imagination or temporary persuasion of their being agents, and proceed in our reasonings upon that supposition, which must necessarily many times mislead and confound us. But neither he nor Ican descry any other agent in the mind besides the mind itself: nor can I distinguish any more than two steps in the action of the mind, the discerning what is to be done, and the doing it; or any more than three substances concerned in the whole process, the object, the mind, and the subject whereon it operates. Thus when upon seeing an orange tossed at your head, you instantly hold up your hand to save your face: the orange is the object, the mind is the discerner and sole actor upon your hand, which is the subject. Or more accurately, the further end of the optic nerve, or that other substance, if any such there be, whereof the idea of the orange is the modification, we call the object; and that inner end of some nerve or other nearer substance employed by the mind in moving the arm, is the subject.

17. Perhaps I may be thought too nice in the last part of this explanation, but there are folks who push their refinements a bar's length beyond me, and draw out the process of action much farther than I can pretend to. For besides our active power, they in their great bounty give us an elective power too, without which the former cannot wag a finger; and according to their way of discoursing, the matter seems to stand thus. Understanding and passion, like two council, plead their causes on opposite sides,

VOL. I.

6

while the Will, an arbitrary monarch, sits umpire between them, and by virtue of its prerogative or elective power gives the preference to either as it pleases, without regard to the weight of their arguments, or creates a new preference not suggested by either: this being done, the bill goes to the understanding, which discerning the preference so given, pronounces it good, and adds the sanction of its judgment thereto: then it returns back to the volition where it receives the royal assent, and is from thence transmitted to the active powers as officers of government in order to be carried into immediate execution.

Wherefore in hopes of escaping all these perplexities, I shall crave leave to call the faculties by other names, to wit, the active power, or simply power, activity or energy of the mind, and the passive power, perceptivity or discernment: for I think these cannot be mistaken for agents having powers of their own, nor for instruments distinct from the mind, and employed by it in the performance of its works. Nevertheless, as one is never more easily understood than when using the language current in vogue, I shall not totally discard the old terms Understanding, Will, and Volition, nor scruple applying them to the faculties as often as I can do it safely, and when the occasion introducing or context accompanying them shall ascertain their meaning beyond all danger of misapprehension.

CHAP. II.

ACTION.

I HAVE heard of a formal old gentleman who, finding his horse uneasy under the saddle, alighted and called to his servant in the following manner. Tom, take off the saddle which is upon my bay horse and lay it upon the ground, then take the saddle from thy grey horse and put it upon my bay horse; lastly, put the other saddle upon thy grey horse. The fellow gaped all the while at this long preachment, and at last cried out, Lack-a-day, Sir, could not you have said at once, Change the saddles? We see here how many actions are comprised under those three little words, Change the saddles, and yet the master, for all his exactness, did not particularize the tenth part of them; lifting up the flap of the saddle, pulling the strap, raising the tongue, drawing out the buckle, taking up the saddle, pulling it towards him, stooping to