1. This idea how got. The mind being every day informed, by the senses, of the alteration of those
simple ideas it observes in things without; and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases
to be, and another begins to exist which was not before; reflecting also on what passes within itself,
and observing a constant change of its ideas, sometimes by the impression of outward objects on
the senses, and sometimes by the determination of its own choice; and concluding from what it has
so constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future be made in the same
things, by like agents, and by the like ways,--considers in one thing the possibility of having any of
its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change; and so comes by
that idea which we call power. Thus we say, Fire has a power to melt gold, i.e., to destroy the
consistency of its insensible parts, and consequently its hardness, and make it fluid; and gold has a
power to be melted; that the sun has a power to blanch wax, and wax a power to be blanched by the
sun, whereby the yellowness is destroyed, and whiteness made to exist in its room. In which, and
the like cases, the power we consider is in reference to the change of perceivable ideas. For we
cannot observe any alteration to be made in, or operation upon anything, but by the observable
change of its sensible ideas; nor conceive any alteration to be made, but by conceiving a change of
some of its ideas.
2. Power, active and passive. Power thus considered is two-fold, viz., as able to make, or able to
receive any change. The one may be called active, and the other passive power. Whether matter be
not wholly destitute of active power, as its author, God, is truly above all passive power; and whether
the intermediate state of created spirits be not that alone which is capable of both active and
passive power, may be worth consideration. I shall not now enter into that inquiry, my present
business being not to search into the original of power, but how we come by the idea of it. But since
active powers make so great a part of our complex ideas of natural substances, (as we shall see
hereafter,) and I mention them as such, according to common apprehension; yet they being not,
perhaps, so truly active powers as our hasty thoughts are apt to represent them, I judge it not amiss,
by this intimation, to direct our minds to the consideration of God and spirits, for the clearest idea of
active power.
3. Power includes relation. I confess power includes in it some kind of relation, (a relation to action
or change,) as indeed which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does
not? For, our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret
relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly. And
sensible qualities, as colours and smells, etc., what are they but the powers of different bodies, in
relation to our perception, etc.? And, if considered in the things themselves, do they not depend on
the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in them.
Our idea therefore of power, I think, may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be
considered as one of them; being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas
of substances, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe.
4. The clearest idea of active power had from spirit. We are abundantly furnished with the idea of
passive power by almost all sorts of sensible things. In most of them we cannot avoid observing
their sensible qualities, nay, their very substances, to be in a continual flux. And therefore with
reason we look on them as liable still to the same change. Nor have we of active power (which is the
more proper signification of the word power) fewer instances. Since whatever change is observed,
the mind must collect a power somewhere able to make that change, as well as a possibility in the
thing itself to receive it. But yet, if we will consider it attentively, bodies, by our senses, do not afford
us so clear and distinct an idea of active power, as we have from reflection on the operations of our
minds. For all power relating to action, and there being but two sorts of action whereof we have an
idea, viz., thinking and motion, let us consider whence we have the clearest ideas of the powers
which produce these actions. (1) Of thinking, body affords us no idea at all; it is only from reflection
that we have that. (2) Neither have we from body any idea of the beginning of motion. A body at rest
affords us no idea of any active power to move; and when it is set in motion itself, that motion is
rather a passion than an action in it. For, when the ball obeys the motion of a billiard-stick, it is not
any action of the ball, but bare passion. Also when by impulse it sets another ball in motion that lay
in its way, it only communicates the motion it had received from another, and loses in itself so much
as the other received: which gives us but a very obscure idea of an active power of moving in body,
whilst we observe it only to transfer, but not produce any motion. For it is but a very obscure idea of
power which reaches not the production of the action, but the continuation of the passion. For so is
motion in a body impelled by another; the continuation of the alteration made in it from rest to
motion being little more an action, than the continuation of the alteration of its figure by the same
blow is an action. The idea of the beginning of motion we have only from reflection on what passes
in ourselves; where we find by experience, that, barely by willing it, barely by a thought of the mind,
we can move the parts of our bodies, which were before at rest. So that it seems to me, we have,
from the observation of the operation of bodies by our senses, but a very imperfect obscure idea of
active power; since they afford us not any idea in themselves of the power to begin any action,
either motion or thought. But if, from the impulse bodies are observed to make one upon another,
any one thinks he has a clear idea of power, it serves as well to my purpose; sensation being one of
those ways whereby the mind comes by its ideas: only I thought it worth while to consider here, by
the way, whether the mind doth not receive its idea of active power clearer from reflection on its own
operations, than it doth from any external sensation.
5. Will and understanding two powers in mind or spirit. This, at least, I think evident,--That we find in
ourselves a power to begin or forbear, continue or end several actions of our minds, and motions of
our bodies, barely by a thought or preference of the mind ordering, or as it were commanding, the
doing or not doing such or such a particular action. This power which the mind has thus to order the
consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the
body to its rest, and vice versa, in any particular instance, is that which we call the Will. The actual
exercise of that power, by directing any particular action, or its forbearance, is that which we call
volition or willing. The forbearance of that action, consequent to such order or command of the
mind, is called voluntary. And whatsoever action is performed without such a thought of the mind, is
called involuntary. The power of perception is that which we call the Understanding. Perception,
which we make the act of the understanding, is of three sorts:--1. The perception of ideas in our
minds. 2. The perception of the signification of signs. 3. The perception of the connexion or
repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, that there is between any of our ideas. All these are
attributed to the understanding, or perceptive power, though it be the two latter only that use allows
us to say we understand.
6. Faculties, not real beings. These powers of the mind, viz., of perceiving, and of preferring, are
usually called by another name. And the ordinary way of speaking is, that the understanding and will
are two faculties of the mind; a word proper enough, if it be used, as all words should be, so as not
to breed any confusion in men's thoughts, by being supposed (as I suspect it has been) to stand for
some real beings in the soul that performed those actions of understanding and volition. For when
we say the will is the commanding and superior faculty of the soul; that it is or is not free; that it
determines the inferior faculties; that it follows the dictates of the understanding, etc.,--though these
and the like expressions, by those that carefully attend to their own ideas, and conduct their
thoughts more by the evidence of things than the sound of words, may be understood in a clear and
distinct sense--yet I suspect, I say, that this way of speaking of faculties has misled many into a
confused notion of so many distinct agents in us, which had their several provinces and authorities,
and did command, obey, and perform several actions, as so many distinct beings; which has been
no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and uncertainty, in questions relating to them.
7. Whence the ideas of liberty and necessity. Every one, I think, finds in himself a power to begin or
forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of
this power of the mind over the actions of the man, which everyone finds in himself, arise the ideas
of liberty and necessity.
8. Liberty, what. All the actions that we have any idea of reducing themselves, as has been said, to
these two, viz., thinking and motion; so far as a man has power to think or not to think, to move or
not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free.
Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man's power; wherever doing or not
doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not free, though
perhaps the action may be voluntary. So that the idea of liberty is, the idea of a power in any agent
to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind,
whereby either of them is preferred to the other: where either of them is not in the power of the
agent to be produced by him according to his volition, there he is not at liberty; that agent is under
necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be
thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. A little consideration of an
obvious instance or two may make this clear.
9. Supposes understanding and will. A tennis-ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, or
lying still at rest, is not by any one taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall
find it is because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think, and consequently not to have any volition,
or preference of motion to rest, or vice versa; and therefore has not liberty, is not a free agent; but all
its both motion and rest come under our idea of necessary, and are so called. Likewise a man falling
into the water, (a bridge breaking under him), has not herein liberty, is not a free agent. For though
he has volition, though he prefers his not falling to falling; yet the forbearance of that motion not
being in his power, the stop or cessation of that motion follows not upon his volition; and therefore
therein he is not free. So a man striking himself, or his friend, by a convulsive motion of his arm,
which it is not in his power, by volition or the direction of his mind, to stop or forbear, nobody thinks
he has in this liberty; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint.
10. Belongs not to volition. Again: suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room where
is a person he longs to see and speak with; and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out:
he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in, i.e.,
prefers his stay to going away. I ask, is not this stay voluntary? I think nobody will doubt it: and yet,
being locked fast in, it is evident he is not at liberty not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So
that liberty is not an idea belonging to volition, or preferring; but to the person having the power of
doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall choose or direct. Our idea of liberty reaches
as far as that power, and no farther. For wherever restraint comes to check that power, or
compulsion takes away that indifferency of ability to act, or to forbear acting, there liberty, and our
notion of it, presently ceases.
11. Voluntary opposed to involuntary, not to necessary. We have instances enough, and often more
than enough, in our own bodies. A man's heart beats, and the blood circulates, which it is not in his
power by any thought or volition to stop; and therefore in respect of these motions, where rest
depends not on his choice, nor would follow the determination of his mind, if it should prefer it, he is
not a free agent. Convulsive motions agitate his legs, so that though he wills it ever so much, he
cannot by any power of his mind stop their motion, (as in that odd disease called chorea sancti viti),
but he is perpetually dancing; he is not at liberty in this action, but under as much necessity of
moving, as a stone that falls, or a tennis-ball struck with a racket. On the other side, a palsy or the
stocks hinder his legs from obeying the determination of his mind, if it would thereby transfer his
body to another place. In all these there is want of freedom; though the sitting still, even of a
paralytic, whilst he prefers it to a removal, is truly voluntary. Voluntary, then, is not opposed to
necessary, but to involuntary. For a man may prefer what he can do, to what he cannot do; the state
he is in, to its absence or change; though necessity has made it in itself unalterable.
12. Liberty, what. As it is in the motions of the body, so it is in the thoughts of our minds: where any
one is such, that we have power to take it up, or lay it by, according to the preference of the mind,
there we are at liberty. A waking man, being under the necessity of having some ideas constantly in
his mind, is not at liberty to think or not to think; no more than he is at liberty, whether his body shall
touch any other or no: but whether he will remove his contemplation from one idea to another is
many times in his choice; and then he is, in respect of his ideas, as much at liberty as he is in
respect of bodies he rests on; he can at pleasure remove himself from one to another. But yet some
ideas to the mind, like some motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot
avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use. A man on the rack is not at liberty to
lay by the idea of pain, and divert himself with other contemplations: and sometimes a boisterous
passion hurries our thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of
thinking on other things, which we would rather choose. But as soon as the mind regains the power
to stop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these motions of the body without, or thoughts within,
according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as a free agent
again.
13. Necessity, what. Wherever thought is wholly wanting, or the power to act or forbear according to
the direction of thought, there necessity takes place. This, in an agent capable of volition, when the
beginning or continuation of any action is contrary to that preference of his mind, is called
compulsion; when the hindering or stopping any action is contrary to his volition, it is called restraint.
Agents that have no thought, no volition at all, are in everything necessary agents.
14. Liberty belongs not to the will. If this be so, (as I imagine it is,) I leave it to be considered,
whether it may not help to put an end to that long agitated, and, I think, unreasonable, because
unintelligible question, viz., Whether man's will be free or no? For if I mistake not, it follows from
what I have said, that the question itself is altogether improper; and it is as insignificant to ask
whether man's will be free, as to ask whether his sleep be swift, or his virtue square: liberty being as
little applicable to the will, as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue. Every one
would laugh at the absurdity of such a question as either of these: because it is obvious that the
modifications of motion belong not to sleep, nor the difference of figure to virtue; and when one well
considers it, I think he will as plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to
agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power.
15. Volition. Such is the difficulty of explaining and giving clear notions of internal actions by sounds,
that I must here warn my reader, that ordering, directing, choosing, preferring, etc., which I have
made use of, will not distinctly enough express volition, unless he will reflect on what he himself
does when he wills. For example, preferring, which seems perhaps best to express the act of
volition, does it not precisely. For though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he
ever wills it? Volition, it is plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting that dominion it takes itself
to have over any part of the man, by employing it in, or withholding it from, any particular action. And
what is the will, but the faculty to do this? And is that faculty anything more in effect than a power;
the power of the mind to determine its thought, to the producing, continuing, or stopping any action,
as far as it depends on us? For can it be denied that whatever agent has a power to think on its own
actions, and to prefer their doing or omission either to other, has that faculty called will? Will, then, is
nothing but such a power. Liberty, on the other side, is the power a man has to do or forbear doing
any particular action according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in the mind;
which is the same thing as to say, according as he himself wills it.
16. Powers, belonging to agents. It is plain then that the will is nothing but one power or ability, and
freedom another power or ability so that, to ask, whether the will has freedom, is to ask whether one
power has another power, one ability another ability; a question at first sight too grossly absurd to
make a dispute, or need an answer. For, who is it that sees not that powers belong only to agents,
and are attributes only of substances, and not of powers themselves? So that this way of putting the
question (viz., whether the will be free) is in effect to ask, whether the will be a substance, an agent,
or at least to suppose it, since freedom can properly be attributed to nothing else. If freedom can
with any propriety of speech be applied to power, it may be attributed to the power that is in a man
to produce, or forbear producing, motion in parts of his body, by choice or preference; which is that
which denominates him free, and is freedom itself. But if any one should ask, whether freedom were
free, he would be suspected not to understand well what he said; and he would be thought to
deserve Midas's ears, who, knowing that rich was a denomination for the possession of riches,
should demand whether riches themselves were rich.
17. How the will, instead of the man, is called free. However, the name faculty, which men have
given to this power called the will, and whereby they have been led into a way of talking of the will
as acting, may, by an appropriation that disguises its true sense, serve a little to palliate the
absurdity; yet the will, in truth, signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose: and when
the will, under the name of a faculty, is considered as it is, barely as an ability to do something, the
absurdity in saying it is free, or not free, will easily discover itself For, if it be reasonable to suppose
and talk of faculties as distinct beings that can act, (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the
will is free,) it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking faculty, and a dancing
faculty, by which these actions are produced, which are but several modes of motion; as well as we
make the will and understanding to be faculties, by which the actions of choosing and perceiving are
produced, which are but several modes of thinking. And we may as properly say that it is the singing
faculty sings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that the will chooses, or that the understanding
conceives; or, as is usual, that the will directs the understanding, or the understanding obeys or
obeys not the will: it being altogether as proper and intelligible to say that the power of speaking
directs the power of singing, or the power of singing obeys or disobeys the power of speaking.
18. This way of talking causes confusion of thought. This way of talking, nevertheless, has
prevailed, and, as I guess, produced great confusion. For these being all different powers in the
mind, or in the man, to do several actions, he exerts them as he thinks fit: but the power to do one
action is not operated on by the power of doing another action. For the power of thinking operates
not on the power of choosing, nor the power of choosing on the power of thinking; no more than the
power of dancing operates on the power of singing, or the power of singing on the power of dancing,
as any one who reflects on it will easily perceive. And yet this is it which we say when we thus
speak, that the will operates on the understanding, or the understanding on the will.
19. Powers are relations, not agents. I grant, that this or that actual thought may be the occasion of
volition, or exercising the power a man has to choose; or the actual choice of the mind, the cause of
actual thinking on this or that thing: as the actual singing of such a tune may be the cause of
dancing such a dance, and the actual dancing of such a dance the occasion of singing such a tune.
But in all these it is not one power that operates on another: but it is the mind that operates, and
exerts these powers; it is the man that does the action; it is the agent that has power, or is able to
do. For powers are relations, not agents: and that which has the power or not the power to operate,
is that alone which is or is not free, and not the power itself For freedom, or not freedom, can belong
to nothing but what has or has not a power to act.
20. Liberty belongs not to the will. The attributing to faculties that which belonged not to them, has
given occasion to this way of talking: but the introducing into discourses concerning the mind, with
the name of faculties, a notion of their operating, has, I suppose, as little advanced our knowledge in
that part of ourselves, as the great use and mention of the like invention of faculties, in the
operations of the body, has helped us in the knowledge of physic. Not that I deny there are faculties,
both in the body and mind: they both of them have their powers of operating, else neither the one
nor the other could operate. For nothing can operate that is not able to operate; and that is not able
to operate that has no power to operate. Nor do I deny that those words, and the like, are to have
their place in the common use of languages that have made them current. It looks like too much
affectation wholly to lay them by: and philosophy itself, though it likes not a gaudy dress, yet, when it
appears in public, must have so much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fashion and
language of the country, so far as it can consist with truth and perspicuity. But the fault has been,
that faculties have been spoken of and represented as so many distinct agents. For, it being asked,
what it was that digested the meat in our stomachs? it was a ready and very satisfactory answer to
say, that it was the digestive faculty. What was it that made anything come out of the body? the
expulsive faculty. What moved? the motive faculty. And so in the mind, the intellectual faculty, or the
understanding, understood; and the elective faculty, or the will, willed or commanded. This is, in
short, to say, that the ability to digest, digested; and the ability to move, moved; and the ability to
understand, understood. For faculty, ability, and power, I think, are but different names of the same
things: which ways of speaking, when put into more intelligible words, will, I think, amount to thus
much;--That digestion is performed by something that is able to digest, motion by something able to
move, and understanding by something able to understand. And, in truth, it would be very strange if
it should be otherwise; as strange as it would be for a man to be free without being able to be free.
21. But to the agent, or man. To return, then, to the inquiry about liberty, I think the question is not
proper, whether the will be free, but whether a man be free. Thus, I think,
First, That so far as any one can, by the direction or choice of his mind, preferring the existence of
any action to the non-existence of that action, and vice versa, make it to exist or not exist, so far he
is free. For if I can, by a thought directing the motion of my finger, make it move when it was at rest,
or vice versa, it is evident, that in respect of that I am free: and if I can, by a like thought of my mind,
preferring one to the other, produce either words or silence, I am at liberty to speak or hold my
peace: and as far as this