ons, by a pretended vigorous internal feeling, has no force.(20) We
cannot, strictly speaking, feel our independence; and we do not always
perceive the causes, frequently imperceptible, on which our resolution
depends. It is as if a needle touched with the loadstone were sensible of
and pleased with its turning toward the north. For it would believe that
it turned itself, independently of any other cause, not perceiving the
insensible motions of the magnetic matter."(21) Thus, he seems to
represent the doctrine of liberty as a mere dream and delusion of the
mind, and the iron scheme of necessity as a stern reality. Is it in the
power of Leibnitz, then, any more than it was in that of Descartes, to
reconcile such a scheme with the free-agency and accountability of man?
Let us hear him and determine.

Leibnitz repudiates the notion of liberty given by Hobbes and Locke. In
his "Nouveaux Essais sur L'Entendement Humain," a work in which he combats
many of the doctrines of Locke, the insignificance of his idea of the
freedom of the will is most clearly and triumphantly exposed. Philalethe,
or the representative of Locke, says: "Liberty is the power that a man has
to do or not to do an action _according to his will_." Theophile, or the
representative of Leibnitz, replies: "If men understood only that by
liberty, when they ask whether the will is free, their question would be
truly absurd." And again: "The question ought not to be asked," says
Philalethe, "if the will is free: that is to speak in a very improper
manner: but if man is free. This granted, I say that, when any one can, by
the direction or choice of his mind, prefer the existence of one action to
the non-existence of that action and to the contrary, that is to say, when
he can make it exist or not exist, _according to his will_, then he is
free. _And we can scarcely see how it could be possible to conceive a
being more free than one who is capable of doing what he wills._"
Theophile rejoins: "When we reason concerning the liberty of the will, we
do not demand if the man can do what he wills, but if he has a sufficient
independence in the will itself; we do not ask if he has free limbs or
elbow-room, but if the mind is free, and in what that freedom
consists."(22)

Having thus exploded the delusive notion of liberty which Locke had
borrowed from Hobbes, Leibnitz proceeds to take what seems to be higher
ground. He expressly declares, that in order to constitute man