circle to the circumference are not equal, he
understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else
than mathematicians understand by it. So when men make errors in
calculation, the numbers which are in their minds are not those which
are upon the paper. As far as their mind is concerned there is no error,
although it seems as if there were, because we think that the numbers in
their minds are those which are upon the paper. If we did not think so,
we should not believe them to be in error. For example, when I lately
heard a man complaining that his court had flown into one of his
neighbor's fowls, I understood what he meant, and therefore did not
imagine him to be in error. This is the source from which so many
controversies arise--that men either do not properly explain their own
thoughts, or do not properly interpret those of other people; for, in
truth, when they most contradict one another, they either think the same
things or something different, so that those things which they suppose
to be errors and absurdities in another person are not so.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] From the _Improvement of the Understanding_, Sec.Sec. 33-35.

CHAPTER XI

DETERMINISM AND MORALS

_The Mind Is Necessarily Determined_

The mind is a certain and determinate mode of thought, and therefore it
cannot be the free cause of its own actions, or have an absolute faculty
of willing or not willing, but must be determined to this or that
volition by a cause which is also determined by another cause, and this
again by another, and so on _ad infinitum_.

In the same manner it is demonstrated that in the mind there exists no
absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, etc. These and the
like faculties, therefore, are either altogether fictitious, or else are
nothing but metaphysical or universal entities, which we are in the
habit of forming from individual cases. The intellect and will,
therefore, are related to this or that idea or volition as rockiness is
related to this or that rock, or as man is related to Peter or Paul. The
reason why men imagine themselves to be free we have already explained.

_Faculty Psychology Fallacious_

Before, however, I advance any further, I must observe that by the will
I understand a faculty of affirming or denying, but not a desire; a
faculty, I say, by which the mind affirms or denies that which is true
or false, and not a desire by which the mind seeks a thing or turns