| We may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves; but a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character; and even where he cannot, he concludes in general, that he might, were he perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of our situation and temper, and the most secret springs of our complexion and disposition. |
| Now this is the very essence of necessity, according to the foregoing doctrine. |
| A third reason why the doctrine of liberty has generally been better received in the world, than its antagonist, proceeds from religion, which has been very unnecessarily interested in this question. |
| There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical debates to endeavour to refute any hypothesis by a pretext of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. |
| When any opinion leads us into absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. |
| Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be foreborn, as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious. |
| This I observe in general, without pretending to draw any advantage from it. |
| I submit myself frankly to an examination of this kind, and dare venture to affirm, that the doctrine of necessity, according to my explication of it, is not only innocent, but even advantageous to religion and morality. |
| I define necessity two ways, conformable to the two definitions of cause, of which it makes an essential part. |
| I place it either in the constant union and conjunction of like objects, or in the inference of the mind from the one to the other. |
| Now necessity, in both these senses, has universally, though tacitely, in the schools, in the pulpit, and in common life, been allowed to belong to the will of man, and no one has ever pretended to deny, that we can draw inferences concerning human actions, and that those inferences are founded on the experienced union of like actions with like motives and circumstances. |
| The only particular in which any one can differ from me, is either, that perhaps he will refuse to call this necessity. |
| But as long as the meaning is understood, I hope the word can do no harm. |
| Or that he will maintain there is something else in the operations of matter. |
| Now whether it be so or not is of no consequence to religion, whatever it may be to natural philosophy. |
| I may be mistaken in asserting, that we have no idea of any other connexion in the actions of body, and shall be glad to be farther instructed on that head: But sure I am, I ascribe nothing to the actions of the mind, but what must readily be allowed of. |
| Let no one, therefore, put an invidious construction on my words, by saying simply, that I assert the necessity of human actions, and place them on the same footing with the operations of senseless matter. |
| I do not ascribe to the will that unintelligible necessity, which is supposed to lie in matter. |
| But I ascribe to matter, that intelligible quality, call it necessity or not, which the most rigorous orthodoxy does or must allow to belong to the will. |
| I change, therefore, nothing in the received systems, with regard to the will, but only with regard to material objects. |
| Nay I shall go farther, and assert, that this kind of necessity is so essential to religion and morality, that without it there must ensue an absolute subversion of both, and that every other supposition is entirely destructive to all laws both divine and human. |