hich Mr. Hobbes also does
not develop enough. The truth is that we have some power also over our
volitions, but obliquely, and not absolutely and indifferently. This has
been explained in some passages of this work. Finally Mr. Hobbes shows,
like others before him, that the certainty of events, and necessity itself,
if there were any in the way our actions depend upon causes, would not
prevent us from employing deliberations, exhortations, blame and praise,
punishments and rewards: for these are of service and prompt men to produce
actions or to refrain from them. Thus, if human actions were necessary,
they would be so through these means. But the truth is, that since these
actions are not necessary absolutely whatever one may do, these means
contribute only to render the actions determinate and certain, as they are
indeed; for their nature shows that they are not subject to an absolute
necessity. He gives also a good enough notion of _freedom_, in so far as it
is taken in a general sense, common to intelligent and non-intelligent
substances: he states that a thing is deemed free when the power which it
has is not impeded by an external thing. Thus the water that is dammed by a
dyke has the power to spread, but not the freedom. On the other hand, it
has not the power to rise above the dyke, although nothing would prevent it
then from spreading, and although nothing from outside prevents it from
rising so high. To that end it would be necessary that the water itself
should come from a higher point or that the water-level should be raised by
an increased flow. Thus a prisoner lacks the freedom, while a sick man
lacks the power, to go his way.

5. There is in Mr. Hobbes's preface an abstract of the disputed points,
which I will give here, adding some expression of opinion. _On one side_
(he says) the assertion is made, (1) 'that it is not in the present power
of man to choose for himself the will that he should have'. That is _well_
said, especially in relation to present will: men choose the objects
through will, but they do not choose their present wills, which spring from
reasons and dispositions. It is true, however, that one can seek new [397]
reasons for oneself, and with time give oneself new dispositions; and by
this means one can also obtain for oneself a will which one had not and
could not have given oneself forthwith. It is (to use the comparison Mr.
Hobbes himself uses) as with hunger or with thirst. At the pre