Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (Foote).djvu/48

 take more or less care of their young; when they act in virtue of vain fears; when they apprehend danger and fly from it, and sometimes defend themselves; when they quarrel among themselves about love or other matters, and terminate those quarrels by fighting; when they follow those leaders among themselves that presume to go first; and when they are either obedient to the shepherd and his dog or refractory. And why should man be deemed free in the performance of the same or like actions? He has indeed more knowledge than sheep. He takes in more things as matter of pleasure than they do, being sometimes moved with notions of honor and virtue, as well as with those pleasures he has in common with them. He is also more moved by absent things and things future than they are. He is also subject to more vain fears, more mistakes and wrong actions, and infinitely more absurdities in notions. He has also more power and strength, as well as more art and cunning, and is capable of doing more good and more mischief to his fellow-men than they are to one another. But these larger powers and larger weaknesses which are of the same kind with the powers and weaknesses of sheep, cannot contain Liberty in them, and plainly make no perceivable difference between them and men as to the general causes of action, in finite intelligent and sensible beings, no more than the different degrees of these powers and weaknesses among the various kinds of beasts, birds, fishes, and reptiles do among them. Wherefore I need not run through the actions of foxes,