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offered but every man's own experience, by reflection on himself, and remembering what he himself meaneth when he saith an action is spontaneous: a man deliberates: such is his will: that agent or that action is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be satisfied, that deliberation is the consideration of the good or evil sequels of an action to come; that by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate action (or else nothing is meant by it); that will is the last act of our deliberation; that a free-agent is he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external impediments. But, to those that out of custom speak not what they conceive, but what they hear, and are not able, or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument can be sufficient; because experience and matter of fact is not verified by other men's arguments, but by every man's own sense and memory. For example, how can it be proved that to love a thing and to think it good is all one, to a man that hath not marked his own meaning by those words? or how can it be proved that eternity is not nunc stans to a man that says those words by custom, and never considers how he can conceive the thing in his mind? Also the sixth point, that

a man cannot imagine any thing to begin without a cause, can no other way be made known, but by trying how he can imagine it; but if he try, he shall find as much reason (if there be no cause of the thing) to conceive it should begin at one time as another, that he hath equal reason to think it should begin at all times, which is impossible, and therefore he must think there was some special cause why it began then, rather than sooner or later, or else that it began never, but was eternal.

"For the seventh point, which is, that all events have necessary causes, it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes. Further, let us in this place also suppose any event never so casual, as the throwing (for example) ‘ames ace' upon a pair of dice, and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown. For seeing it was thrown, it had a beginning, and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it, consisting partly in the dice, partly in outward things, as the posture of the parts of the hand, the measure of force applied by the caster, the posture of the parts of the table, and the like. In sum, there was nothing wanting which was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast, and consequently the cast was necessarily thrown; for if it had not been thrown, there had wanted

somewhat requisite to the throwing of it, and so the cause had not been sufficient. In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident, how contingent soever it seem, or how voluntary soever it be, is produced necessarily. The same may be proved also in this manner. Let the case be put, for example, of the weather: 'tis necessary that to-morrow it shall rain or not rain. If, therefore, it be not necessary it shall rain, it is necessary it shall not rain, otherwise there is no necessity that the proposition, it shall rain or not rain, should be true. I know there be some that say, it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass, but not, singly that it shall rain, or that it shall not rain, which is as much as to say, one of them is necessary, yet neither of them is necessary; and therefore to seem to avoid that absurdity, they make a distinction, that neither of them is true determinate, but indeterminate, which distinction either signifies no more but this, one of them is true, but we know not which, and so the necessity remains, though we know it not; or if the meaning of the distinction be not that, it hath no meaning, and they might as well have said, one of them is true titirice, but neither of them, tu patulice.

"The last thing in which also consisteth the whole controversy, namely, that there is no such

thing as an agent, which when all things requisite to action are present, can nevertheless forbear to produce it; or (which is all one) that there is no such thing as freedom from necessity, is easily inferred from that which hath been before alleged. For if it be an agent it can work, and if it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action, and consequently the cause of the action is sufficient, and if sufficient, then also necessary, as hath been proved before. And thus you see how the inconveniences, which it is objected must follow upon the holding of necessity, are avoided, and the necessity itself demonstratively proved. To which I could add, if I thought it good logic, the inconvenience of denying necessity, as that it destroyeth both the decrees and the prescience of God Almighty; for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man, as an instrument, or foreseeth shall come to pass; a man, if he have liberty as hath been affirmed from necessitation, might frustrate, and make not to come to pass, and God should either not foreknow it, and not decree it, or he should foreknow such things shall be, as shall never be, and decree that which shall never come to pass. This is all that hath come into my mind touching this question since I last considered it."

V

The letter from which the foregoing extract is taken is addressed to the Marquis of Newcastle, and dated at Rouen in 1651, twenty years before the publication of Spinoza's most exact and beautiful demonstration of the same principle. Some of Hobbes's antagonists had charged him with having borrowed his arguments from Marsennus, a French author; to which in one of his controversial tracts Hobbes replies with some contempt, that this Marsennus had heard him talk on the subject when he was in Paris, and had borrowed them from him. Dr Priestley has done justice to Hobbes on this question of necessity, and I suspect more than justice in denying that the Stoics were acquainted with the same principle. At any rate, the modern commentators on the subject (and Dr Priestley among them) have added nothing to it but absurdities, from which our author's logic protected him; for he seldom reasoned wrong but when he reasoned from wrong premises. As this question is one of the most interesting in the history of philosophy, I shall perhaps be excused for adding one more extract (of considerable length) to prove that Hobbes is not, in this instance, chargeable with the practical inferences which have been made from his doctrine. In answer to the objections of Bishop

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