However, the name faculty, which men have given to this power called the will, and whereby they have been led into a way of talking of the will as acting, may, by an appropriation that disguises its true sense, serve a little to palliate the absurdity; yet the will, in truth, signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose:  and when the will, under the name of a faculty, is considered as it is, barely as an ability to do something, the absurdity in saying it is free, or not free, will easily discover itself.  For, if it be reasonable to suppose and talk of faculties as distinct beings that can act, (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the will is free,) it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which these actions are produced, which are but several modes of motion; as well as we make the will and understanding to be faculties, by which the actions of choosing and perceiving are produced, which are but several modes of thinking.  And we may as properly say that it is the singing faculty sings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that the will chooses, or that the understanding conceives; or, as is usual, that the will directs the understanding, or the understanding obeys or obeys not the will:  it being altogether as proper and intelligible to say that the power of speaking directs the power of singing, or the power of singing obeys or disobeys the power of speaking.

18.  This way of talking causes confusion of thought.

This way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed, and, as I guess, produced great confusion.  For these being all different powers in the mind, or in the man, to do several actions, he exerts them as he thinks fit:  but the power to do one action is not operated on by the power of doing another action.  For the power of thinking operates not on the power of choosing, nor the power of choosing on the power of thinking; no more than the power of dancing operates on the power of singing, or the power of singing on the power of dancing, as any one who reflects on it will easily perceive.  And yet this is it which we say when we thus speak, that the will operates on the understanding, or the understanding on the will.

19.  Powers are relations, not agents.

I grant, that this or that actual thought may be the occasion of volition, or exercising the power a man has to choose; or the actual choice of the mind, the cause of actual thinking on this or that thing:  as the actual singing of such a tune may be the cause of dancing such a dance, and the actual dancing of such a dance the occasion of singing such a tune.  But in all these it is not one power that operates on another:  but it is the mind that operates, and exerts these powers; it is the man that does the action; it is the agent that has power, or is able to do.  For powers are relations, not agents:  and that which has the power or not the power to operate, is that alone which is or is not free, and not the power itself.  For freedom, or not freedom, can belong to nothing but what has or has not a power to act.