Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/66

 All the pleasure and happiness said to attend this pretend'd liberty consists wholly in creating pleasure and happiness by chusing objects.

Now man, consider'd as an intelligent necessary agent, would no less create this pleasure and happiness to himself by chusing objects; than a being indu'd with the said faculty: if it be true in fact, that things please us, because we chuse them.

But man, as an intelligent necessary agent, has these further pleasures and advantages. He, by not being indifferent to objects, is mov'd by the goodness and agreeableness of them as they appear to him, and as he knows them by reflection and experience. It is not in his power to be indifferent to what causes pleasure or pain. He cannot resist the pleasure arising from the use of his passions, appetites, senses, and reason: and if he suspends his choice of an object, that is present'd to him, by any of these powers as agreeable; it is, because he doubts or examines, whether upon the whole the object would make him happy; and because he would gratify all these powers in the best manner he is able, or at least such of these powers as