Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/44

 must will or prefer as things seem to us, unless we can lye to ourselves, and think that to be worst which we think best.

An ingenious author expresses this matter well when he says, “the question, whether a man be at liberty to will which of the two he pleases, motion or rest; carries the absurdity of it so manifestly in itself, that one might hereby be sufficiently convinc’d, that liberty concerns not the will. For to ask, whether a man be at liberty to will either motion or rest, speaking or silence, which he pleases? ''is to ask, whether a man can will what he wills, or be pleas’d with what he is pleas’d with? A question that needs no answer''.”

To suppose a sensible being capable of willing or preferring, (call it as you please) misery, and refusing good, is to deny it to be really sensible; for every man, while he has his senses, aims at pleasure and happiness, and avoids pain and misery; and this, in willing actions, which are suppos’d to be attended with the most terrible consequences. And therefore the ingenious Mr. very justly observes, that all who com-