he very same thing with chance. As chance
is commonly thought to imply a contradiction, and is at least directly
contrary to experience, there are always the same arguments against
liberty or free-will. If any one alters the definitions, I cannot
pretend to argue with him, until I know the meaning he assigns to these
terms.

SECT. II THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUed

I believe we may assign the three following reasons for the prevalance
of the doctrine of liberty, however absurd it may be in one sense, and
unintelligible in any other. First, After we have performed any action;
though we confess we were influenced by particular views and motives; it
is difficult for us to persuade ourselves we were governed by necessity,
and that it was utterly impossible for us to have acted otherwise; the
idea of necessity seeming to imply something of force, and violence,
and constraint, of which we are not sensible. Few are capable of
distinguishing betwixt the liberty of spontaniety, as it is called in
the schools, and the liberty of indifference; betwixt that which is
opposed to violence, and that which means a negation of necessity and
causes. The first is even the most common sense of the word; and as it
is only that species of liberty, which it concerns us to preserve,
our thoughts have been principally turned towards it, and have almost
universally confounded it with the other.

Secondly, There is a false sensation or experience even of the
liberty of indifference; which is regarded as an argument for its real
existence. The necessity of any action, whether of matter or of the
mind, is not properly a quality in the agent, but in any thinking or
intelligent being, who may consider the action, and consists in the
determination of his thought to infer its existence from some preceding
objects: As liberty or chance, on the other hand, is nothing but the
want of that determination, and a certain looseness, which we feel in
passing or not passing from the idea of one to that of the other. Now we
may observe, that though in reflecting on human actions we seldom feel
such a looseness or indifference, yet it very commonly happens, that in
performing the actions themselves we are sensible of something like
it: And as all related or resembling objects are readily taken for each
other, this has been employed as a demonstrative or even an intuitive
proof of human liberty. We feel that our actions are subject to our will
on most occasio