To avoid these and the like absurdities, nothing can be of greater use than to establish in our minds determined ideas of the things under consideration.  If the ideas of liberty and volition were well fixed in our understandings, and carried along with us in our minds, as they ought, through all the questions that are raised about them, I suppose a great part of the difficulties that perplex men’s thoughts, and entangle their understandings, would be much easier resolved; and we should perceive where the confused signification of terms, or where the nature of the thing caused the obscurity.

27.  Freedom.

First, then, it is carefully to be remembered, That freedom consists in the dependence of the existence, or not existence of any action, upon our volition of it; and not in the dependence of any action, or its contrary, on our preference.  A man standing on a cliff, is at liberty to leap twenty yards downwards into the sea, not because he has a power to do the contrary action, which is to leap twenty yards upwards, for that he cannot do; but he is therefore free, because he has a power to leap or not to leap.  But if a greater force than his, either holds him fast, or tumbles him down, he is no longer free in that case; because the doing or forbearance of that particular action is no longer in his power.  He that is a close prisoner in a room twenty feet square, being at the north side of his chamber, is at liberty to walk twenty feet southward, because he can walk or not walk it; but is not, at the same time, at liberty to do the contrary, i.e. to walk twenty feet northward.

In this, then, consists freedom, viz. in our being able to act or not to act, according as we shall choose or will.

28.  What Volition and action mean.

Secondly, we must remember, that volition or willing is an act of the mind directing its thought to the production of any action, and thereby exerting its power to produce it.  To avoid multiplying of words, I would crave leave here, under the word action, to comprehend the forbearance too of any action proposed:  sitting still, or holding one’s peace, when walking or speaking are proposed, though mere forbearances, requiring as much the determination of the will, and being as often weighty in their consequences, as the contrary actions, may, on that consideration, well enough pass for actions too:  but this I say, that I may not be mistaken, if (for brevity’s sake) I speak thus.

29.  What determines the Will.

Thirdly, the will being nothing but a power in the mind to direct the operative faculties of a man to motion or rest as far as they depend on such direction; to the question, What is it determines the will? the true and proper answer is, The mind.  For that which determines the general power of directing, to this or that particular direction, is nothing but the agent itself exercising the power it has that particular