Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (Foote).djvu/41

 great stress is laid on the case of suspending the will to prove Liberty, yet there is no difference between that and the most common cases of willing and choosing upon the manifest excellency of one object before another. For, as when a man wills or chooses living in England before going out of it (in which will he is manifestly determined by the satisfaction he has in living in England) he rejects the will to go out of England; so a man who suspends a will about any matter, wills doing nothing in it at present, or rejects for a time willing about it; which circumstances of wholly rejecting, and rejecting for a time, make no variation that affects the question. So that willing, or choosing suspension, is like all other choices or wills that we have.

2. Secondly, let us now see whether we are at liberty to will or choose one or the other of two or more objects. Now as to this we will first consider whether we are at liberty to will one of two or more objects wherein we discern any difference; that is, where one upon the whole seems less hurtful than another. And this will not admit of much dispute, if we consider what willing is. Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood. It is judging that one thing is, upon the whole, better than another, or not so bad as another. Wherefore, as we judge of truth or falsehood according to appearances, so we must will or prefer as things seem to us, unless we can lie 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 convinced 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