Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (Foote).djvu/70

 corn, as they hang up murderers in chains to deter other murderers. But I need not go to brutes for examples of the usefulness of punishments on necessary agents. Punishments are not without effect on some idiots and madmen, by restraining them to a certain degree; and they are the very means by which the minds of children are formed by their parents. Nay, punishments have plainly a better effect on children, than on grown persons, and more easily form them to virtue and discipline than they change the vicious habits of grown persons or plant new habits in them. Wherefore the objectors ought to think punishments may be threatened and inflicted on men usefully, though they are necessary agents.

III. Thirdly, it is objected, if men are necessary agents it is of no use to represent reasons to them, or to entreat them, or to admonish them, or to blame them, or to praise them.

To which I answer, that all these, according to me, are necessary causes to determine certain men’s wills to do what we desire of them; and are therefore useful as acting on such necessary agents to whom they are necessary causes of action; but would be of no use if men had free-will, or their wills were not moved by them. So that they who make this objection must run into the absurdities of saying that that cause is useful, which is no cause of action and serves not to change the will, and that that cause is useless which necessitates the effect.

Let me add something further in respect of praise. Men have at all times been praised for actions judged by all the world to be necessary. It has been a standing method of commendation among the epic poets, who are the greatest panegyrists of glorious actions, to attribute their hero’s valor, and his great actions, to some deity present with him and assisting. Homer gives many of his heroes a god or a goddess to attend them in battle or be ready to help them in distress. Virgil describes Æneas as always under the divine