, as I think, the majority of
my refining and subtilising countrymen of the present day have enlisted
under his banner. But the more noble and generous view of the subject
has been powerfully supported by Shaftesbury, Butler, Hutcheson and
Hume. On the last of these I particularly pique myself; inasmuch as,
though he became naturalised as a Frenchman in a vast variety of topics,
the greatness of his intellectual powers exempted him from degradation
in this.

That however which I would chiefly urge in the way of authority, is the
thing mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, I mean, the sentiments
that have animated the authors of religion, that characterise the best
ages of Greece and Rome, and that in all cases display themselves when
the loftiest and most generous sentiments of the heart are called into
action. The opposite creed could only have been engendered in the dregs
of a corrupt and emasculated court; and human nature will never shew
itself what it is capable of being, till the last remains of a doctrine,
invented in the latter part of the seventeenth century, shall have been
consigned to the execration they deserve.

ESSAY XII. OF THE LIBERTY OF HUMAN ACTIONS.

The question, which has been attended with so long and obstinate
debates, concerning the metaphysical doctrines of liberty and
necessity, and the freedom of human actions, is not even yet finally and
satisfactorily settled.

The negative is made out by an argument which seems to amount to
demonstration, that every event requires a cause, a cause why it is as
it is and not otherwise, that the human will is guided by motives, and
is consequently always ruled by the strongest motive, and that we can
never choose any thing, either without a motive of preference, or in the
way of following the weaker, and deserting the stronger motive(26).

(26) Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. VII.

Why is it then that disbelief or doubt should still subsist in a
question so fully decided?

For the same reason that compels us to reject many other demonstrations.
The human mind is so constituted as to oblige us, if not theoretically,
at least practically, to reject demonstration, and adhere to our senses.

The case is thus in the great question of the non-existence of an
external world, or of matter. How ever much the understanding may be
satisfied of the truth of the proposition by the arguments of Berkeley
and others, we no sooner go out into actu