Part 28

(_f_) “Secondly, as for those actions wherein actual deliberation seems not necessary, ‘because never anything appeared that could make a man doubt of the consequence’; I do confess that actions done by virtue of a precedent deliberation, without any actual deliberation for the present, may notwithstanding be truly voluntary and free acts.” In this he agrees with me. But where he adds, “yea, in some cases, and in some sense more free, than if they were actually deliberated of in present”, I do not agree with him. And for the instance he bringeth to prove it, in the man that playeth on an instrument with his hand it maketh nothing for him. For it proveth only, that the habit maketh the motion of his hand more ready and quick; but it proveth not that it maketh it more voluntary, but rather less; because the rest of the motions follow the first by an easiness acquired from long custom; in which motion the will doth not accompany all the strokes of the hand, but gives a beginning to them only in the first. Here is nothing, as I expected, of how far that which I had said, namely, that the action doth necessarily follow the thought, is false; unless it be “improprieties of speech, as calling that voluntary which is free, and limiting the will to the last appetite; and other mistakes, as that no act can be said to be without deliberation”. For improprieties of speech, I will not contend with one that can use _motus primo primi_, _practice practicum_, _actus elicitus_, and many other phrases of the same kind. But to say that free actions are voluntary; and that the will which causeth a voluntary action, is the last appetite; and that that appetite was immediately followed by the action; and that no action of a man can be said in the judgment of the law, to be without deliberation: are no mistakes, for anything that he hath proved to the contrary.

(_g_) “Thirdly, whereas he saith, that ‘some sudden acts, proceeding from violent passions which surprise a man, are justly punished’; I grant they are so sometimes, but not for his reason, &c.” My reason was, “because he had time to deliberate from the instant that he knew the law, to the instant of his action, and ought to have deliberated”, that therefore he may be justly punished. The Bishop grants they are justly punished, and his reason is, “because they were virtually deliberated of”, or, “because it is our fault they were not actually deliberated of”. How a man does deliberate, and yet not actually deliberate, I understand not. If virtual deliberation be not actual deliberation, it is no deliberation. But he calleth virtual deliberation, that which ought to have been, and was not; and says the same that he condemns in me. And his other reason, namely, because it is our fault that we deliberated not, is the same that I said, that we ought to have deliberated, and did not. So that his reprehension here, is a reprehension of himself, proceeding from that the custom of School-language hath made him forget the language of his country. And to that which he adds, “that a necessary act is never a fault, nor justly punishable, when the necessity is inevitably imposed upon us by extrinsical causes”, I have sufficiently answered before in diverse places; shewing that a fault may be necessary from extrinsical causes, and yet voluntary; and that voluntary faults are justly punishable.

(_h_) “But if the necessity be contracted by ourselves, it is justly punishable. As he who by his wanton thoughts in the day time, doth procure his own nocturnal pollution.” This instance, because it maketh not against anything I have held, and partly also because it is a stinking passage, (for surely if, as he that ascribes eyes to the understanding, allows me to say it hath a nose, it stinketh to the nose of the understanding); this sentence I pass over, observing only the canting terms, _not actually free in itself_, but _virtually free in its causes_. In the rest of his answer to this No. XXV, I find nothing alleged in confutation of anything I have said, saving that his last words are, that “T. H. is mistaken in that also, that the right to kill men doth proceed merely from their being noxious” (No. XIV.). But to that I have in the same No. XIV. already answered. I must not pass over, that a little before he hath these words: “If a child, before he have the use of reason, shall kill a man in his passion, yet because he wanted malice to incite him to it, and reason to restrain him from it, he shall not die for it, in the strict rules of particular justice, unless there be some mixture of public justice in the case”. The Bishop would make but an ill judge of innocent children, for such are they that, for want of age, have not use enough of reason to abstain from killing. For the want of reason proceeding from want of age, does therefore take away the punishment, because it taketh away the crime, and makes them innocent. But he introduceth another justice, which he calleth _public_; whereas he called the other _particular_. And by this public justice, he saith, the child though innocent may be put to death. I hope we shall never have the administration of public justice in such hands as his, or in the hands of such as shall take counsel from him. But the distinction he makes is not by himself understood. There are public causes, and private causes. Private are those, where the parties to the cause are both private men. Public are those, where one of the parties is the commonwealth, or the person that representeth it, and the cause criminal. But there is no distinction of justice into public and private. We may read of men that, having sovereign power, did sometimes put an innocent to death, either upon a vow; as Jepthah did in sacrificing his daughter; or when it hath been thought fit that an innocent person should be put to death to save a great number of people. But to put to death a child, not for reason of state, which he improperly calls public justice, but for killing a man, and at the same time to acknowledge such killing to be no crime, I think was never heard of.

NO. XXVI.

_T. H._ Secondly, I conceive when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do a thing, that he does nothing else but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it. And to consider an action, is to imagine the consequences of it, both good and evil. From whence is to be inferred, that deliberation is nothing but alternate imagination of the good and evil sequels of an action, or (which is the same thing) alternate hope and fear, or alternate appetite to do or acquit the action of which he deliberateth.

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]

_J. D._ (_a_) “If I did not know what deliberation was, I should be little relieved in my knowledge by this description. Sometimes he makes it to be a consideration, or an act of the understanding; sometimes an imagination, or an act of the fancy; sometimes he makes it to be an alternation of passions, hope and fear. Sometimes he makes it concern the end, sometimes to concern the means. So he makes it I know not what. The truth is this in brief: ‘Deliberation is an inquiry made by reason, whether this or that, definitely considered, be a good and fit means, or, indefinitely, what are good and fit means to be chosen for attaining some wished end.’”

ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE ANSWER TO NO. XXVI.

(_a_) “If I did not know what deliberation was, I should be little relieved in my knowledge by this description. Sometimes he makes it to be a consideration, or an act of the understanding, sometimes an imagination, or an act of the fancy, &c. So he makes it I know not what.” If the Bishop had observed what he does himself, when he deliberates, reasons, understands, or imagines, he would have known what to make of all that I have said in this Number. He would have known that consideration, understanding, reason, and all the passions of the mind, are imaginations. That to consider a thing, is to imagine it; that to understand a thing, is to imagine it; that to hope and fear, are to imagine the things hoped for and feared. The difference between them is, that when we imagine the consequence of anything, we are said to consider that thing; and when we have imagined anything from a sign, and especially from those signs we call names, we are said to understand his meaning that maketh the sign; and when we reason, we imagine the consequence of affirmations and negations joined together; and when we hope or fear, we imagine things good or hurtful to ourselves: insomuch as all these are but imaginations diversely named from different circumstances: as any man may perceive as easily as he can look into his own thoughts. But to him that thinketh not himself upon the things whereof, but upon the words wherewith he speaketh, and taketh those words on trust from puzzled Schoolmen, it is not only hard, but impossible to be known. And this is the reason that maketh him say, I make deliberation he knows not what. But how is deliberation defined by him? “It is”, saith he, “an inquiry made by reason, whether this or that definitely considered, be a good and fit means; or indefinitely, what are good and fit means to be chosen for attaining some wished end.” If it were not his custom to say, the understanding understandeth, the will willeth, and so of the rest of the faculties, I should have believed that when he says deliberation is an inquiry made by reason, he meaneth an inquiry made by the man that reasoneth; for so it will be sense. But the reason which a man useth in deliberation, being the same thing that is called deliberation, his definition that deliberation is an inquiry made by reason, is no more than if he had said, deliberation is an inquiry made by deliberation; a definition good enough to be made by a Schoolman. Nor is the rest of the definition altogether as it should be; for there is no such thing as an “indefinite consideration of what are good and fit means”; but a man imagining first one thing, then another, considereth them successively and singly each one, whether it conduceth to his ends or not.

NO. XXVII.

_T. H._ Thirdly, I conceive, that in all deliberations, that is to say, in all alternate succession of contrary appetites, the last is that which we call the will, and is immediately before the doing of the action, or next before the doing of it become impossible. All other appetites to do and to quit, that come upon a man during his deliberation, are usually called intentions and inclinations, but not wills; there being but one will, which also in this case may be called last will, though the intention change often.

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]

_J. D._ (_a_) “Still here is nothing but confusion; he confounds the faculty of the will with the act of volition; he makes the will to be the last part of deliberation; he makes the intention, which is a most proper and elicit act of the will, or a willing of the end, as it is to be attained by certain means, to be no willing at all, but only some antecedaneous _inclination_ or propension. He might as well say, that the uncertain agitation of the needle hither and thither to find out the pole, and the resting or fixing of itself directly towards the pole, were both the same thing. But the grossest mistake is, that he will acknowledge no act of man’s will, to be his will, but only the last act, which he calls the last will. If the first were no will, how comes this to be the last will? According to his doctrine, the will of a man should be as unchangeable as the will of God, at least so long as there is a possibility to effect it. (_b_) According to this doctrine, concupiscence with consent should be no sin; for that which is not truly willed is not a sin; or rather should not be at all, unless either the act followed, or were rendered impossible by some intervening circumstances. According to this doctrine no man can say, this is my will, because he knows not yet whether it shall be his last appeal. The truth is, there be many acts of the will, both in respect of the means and of the end. But that act which makes a man’s actions to be truly free, is election; which is the deliberate choosing or refusing of this or that means, or the acceptation of one means before another, where divers are represented by the understanding.

ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE ANSWER TO NO. XXVII.

(_a_) “Still here is nothing but confusion; he confounds the faculty of the will with the act of volition; he makes the will to be the last part of deliberation; he makes the intention, which is a most proper and elicit act of the will, to be no willing at all, but only some antecedaneous (he might as well have said, antecedent) inclination.” To confound the faculty of the will with the will, were to confound a _will_ with _no will_; for the faculty of the will is no will; the act only which he calls _volition_, is the will. As a man that sleepeth hath the _power_ of _seeing_, and _seeth not_, nor hath for that time any _sight_; so also he hath the _power_ of willing, but _willeth nothing_, nor hath for that time any _will_. I must therefore have departed very much from my own principles, if I have confounded the _faculty_ of the _will_ with the _act_ of _volition_. He should have done well to have shown where I confounded them. It is true, I make the will to be the last part of deliberation; but it is that will which maketh the action voluntary, and therefore needs must be the last. But for the preceding variations of the will to do and not to do, though they be so many several wills, contrary to and destroying one another, they usually are called _intentions_; and therefore they are nothing to the will, of which we dispute, that maketh an action voluntary. And though a man have in every long deliberation a great many _wills_ and _nills_, they use to be called inclinations, and the last only _will_ which is immediately followed by the voluntary action. But nevertheless, both he that hath those intentions, and God that seeth them, reckoneth them for so many wills.

(_b_) “According to this doctrine, concupiscence with consent should be no sin; for that which is not truly willed, is not a sin.” This is no consequent to my doctrine: for I hold that they are, in the sight of God, so many consents, so many willings, which would have been followed by actions, if the actions had been in their power. It had been fitter for a man in whom is required gravity and sanctity more than ordinary, to have chosen some other kind of instance. But what meaneth he by _concupiscence with consent_? Can there be concupiscence without consent? It is the consent itself. There may be also a lawful concupiscence with consent. For concupiscence makes not the sin, but the unlawfulness of satisfying such concupiscence; and not the consent, but the will and design to prosecute that which a man knoweth to be unlawful. An appetite to another man’s bread, is concupiscence; and though it be with consent to eat, it is no sin; but the design to take it from the other, notwithstanding that he may fail in his design, that is the sin. And this instance might have served his turn as well as the other; and for consent, if he had understood the truth, he might have put design.

NO. XXVIII.

_T. H._ Fourthly, that those actions which man is said to do upon deliberation, are said to be voluntary, and done upon choice and election. So that voluntary action, and action proceeding from election, is the same thing. And that of a voluntary agent, it is all one to say he is free, and to say he hath not made an end of deliberating.

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]

_J. D._ (_a_) “This short section might pass without an animadversion, but for two things. The one is, that he confounds a voluntary act with a free act. A free act is only that which proceeds from the free election of the rational will after deliberation; but every act that proceeds from the sensitive appetite of man or beast, without deliberation or election, is truly voluntary. (_b_) The other thing observable is his conclusion, that ‘it is all one to say a man is free, and to say he hath not made an end of deliberating’; which confession of his overturns his whole structure of absolute necessity. For if every agent be necessitated to act what he doth act by a necessary and natural flux of extrinsical causes, then he is no more free before he deliberates, or whilst he deliberates, than he is after; but by T. H.’s confession here, he is more free whilst he deliberates, than he is after. And so after all his flourishes, for an absolute or extrinsical necessity, he is glad to set himself down, and rest contented with an hypothetical necessity, which no man ever denied or doubted of; ascribing the necessitation of a man in free acts to his own deliberation, and in indeliberate acts to his last thought, No. XXV. What is this to a natural and special influence of extrinsical causes? (_c_) “Again, ‘liberty’, saith he, ‘is an absence of extrinsical impediments’; but deliberation doth produce no new extrinsical impediment; therefore let him choose which part he will, either he is free after deliberation, by his own doctrine, or he was not free before. Our own deliberation, and the direction of our own understanding, and the election of our own will, do produce an hypothetical necessity, that the event be such as the understanding hath directed, and the will elected. But for as much as the understanding might have directed otherwise, and the will have elected otherwise, this is far from an absolute necessity. Neither doth liberty respect only future acts, but present acts also. Otherwise God did not freely create the world. In the same instant wherein the will elects, it is free, according to a priority of nature, though not of time, to elect otherwise. And so in a divided sense, the will is free, even whilst it acts; though in a compounded sense it be not free. Certainly, deliberation doth constitute, not destroy liberty.

ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE ANSWER TO NO. XXVIII.

(_a_) “This short section might pass, but for two things; one is, that he confounds a voluntary act with a free act.” I do indeed take all voluntary acts to be free, and all free acts to be voluntary; but withal that all acts, whether free or voluntary, if they be acts, were necessary before they were acts. But where is the error? ‘A free act’, saith he, ‘is only that which proceeds from the free election of the rational will, after deliberation; but every act that proceeds from the sensitive appetite of man or beast, without deliberation or election, is truly voluntary.’ So that my error lies in this, that I distinguish not between a rational will and a sensitive appetite in the same man. As if the appetite and will in man or beast were not the same thing, or that sensual men and beasts did not deliberate, and choose one thing before another, in the same manner that wise men do. Nor can it be said of wills, that one is rational, the other sensitive; but of men. And if it be granted that deliberation is always (as it is not) rational, there were no cause to call men rational more than beasts. For it is manifest by continual experience, that beasts do deliberate.

(_b_) “The other thing observable is his conclusion, that ‘it is all one to say, a man is free, and to say, he hath not made an end of deliberating’: which confession of his overturns his whole structure of absolute necessity.” Why so? ‘Because’, saith he, ‘if every agent be necessitated to act what he doth act by extrinsical causes, then he is no more free before he deliberates, or whilst he deliberates, than he is after’. But this is a false consequence; he should have inferred thus:--“then he is no less necessitated before he deliberates than he is after”; which is true, and yet nevertheless he is more free. But taking necessity to be inconsistent with liberty, which is the question between us: instead of _necessitated_ he puts in _not free_. And therefore to say ‘a man is free till he hath made an end of deliberating’, is no contradiction to absolute and antecedent necessity. And whereas he adds presently after, that I ascribe the necessitation of a man in free acts to his own deliberation, and in indeliberate acts to his last thoughts: he mistakes the matter. For I ascribe all necessity to the universal series or order of causes, depending on the first cause eternal: which the Bishop understandeth, as if I had said in his phrase, to a special influence of extrinsical causes; that is, understandeth it not at all.

(_c_) “Again, ‘liberty,’ saith he, ‘is an absence of extrinsical impediments’: but deliberation doth produce no new extrinsical impediment; therefore either he is free after deliberation, or he was not free before.” I cannot perceive in these words any more force of inference, than of so many other words whatsoever put together at adventure. But be his meaning what he will, I say not that deliberation produceth any impediments: for there are no impediments but to the action, whilst we are endeavouring to do it, which is not till we have done deliberating. But during the deliberation there arise thoughts in him that deliberateth, concerning the consequence of the action whereof he deliberateth, which cause the action following; which are not impediments to that action which was not done, but the causes of that which was done. That which followeth in this Number is not intelligible, by reason of the insignificance of these words, “understanding directeth; will electeth; hypothetical necessity”; which are but jargon, and his “divided sense” and “compounded sense”, nonsense. And this also, “liberty respecteth not future acts only, but present acts also”, is unintelligible. For how can a man have liberty to do or not to do that which is at the same instant already done. For where he addeth, “otherwise God did not freely create the world”, it proves nothing; because he had the liberty to create it, before it was created. Besides, it is a profaning of the name of God, to make instances of his incomprehensible working in a question as this is, merely natural.

NO. XXIX.