Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/29

 is the most obscure and difficult question in all Philosophy: that the learned are fuller of contradictions to themselves, and to one another, on this, than on any other subject: And that he writes against the common notion of liberty, and endeavors to establish another notion, which he allows to be intricate.

But how can all this happen in a plain matter of fact, suppos’d to be experienc’d by everybody? What difficulty can there be in stating a plain matter of fact, and describing what every body feels? What need of so much Philosophy? And why so many contradictions on the subject? And how can all men experience Liberty, when it is allow’d that the common notion of liberty is false, or not experienc’d; and a new notion of Liberty, not thought on before (or thought on but by few) is set up as matter of experience? This could not happen if matter of fact was clear for liberty.

3. Other Asserters of Liberty seem driven into it on account of suppos’d inconveniencies attending the doctrine of Necessity. The great, in his Treatise of Free-will, acknowledges in effect, that the asserters of Necessity have