Part 7

(_d_) “Yet I have no reason to be offended at it; for he deals no otherwise with me than he doth with himself. Here he tells us that ‘voluntary presupposeth deliberation.’ But (No. XXV.) he tells us contrary, ‘that whatsoever followeth the last appetite is voluntary, and where there is but one appetite, that is the last:’ and that ‘no action of a man can be said to be without deliberation, though never so sudden.’ So (No. XXXIII.) he tells us, that ‘by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding, or else nothing is meant by it:’ yet here he tells us, that ‘all voluntary actions which proceed not from fear, are spontaneous,’ whereof many are deliberate, as that wherein he instanceth himself, ‘to give money for merchandise.’ Thirdly, when I said that children, before they have the use of reason, act spontaneously, as when they suck the breast, but do not act freely, because they have not judgment to deliberate or elect, here T. H. undertakes to prove that they do deliberate and elect; and yet presently after confesseth again, that ‘a child may be so young, as to do what it doth without all deliberation.’

“Besides these mistakes and contradictions, he hath other errors also in this section. As this, that no actions proceeding from fear are spontaneous. He who throws his goods into the sea to avoid drowning, doth it not only _spontaneously_, but even _freely_. He that wills the end, wills the means conducing to that end. It is true that if the action be considered nakedly without all circumstances, no man willingly or spontaneously casts his goods into the sea. But if we take the action, as in this particular case, invested with all the circumstances, and in order to the end, that is, the saving of his own life, it is not only voluntary and spontaneous, but elective and chosen by him, as the most probable means for his own preservation. As there is an antecedent and a subsequent will, so there is an antecedent and a subsequent spontaneity. His grammatical argument, grounded upon the derivation of spontaneous from _sponte_, weighs nothing; we have learned in the rudiments of logic, that conjugates are sometimes in name only, and not in deed. He who casts his goods into the sea, may do it of his own accord in order to the end. Secondly, he errs in this also, that nothing is opposed to spontaneity but only fear. Invincible and antecedent ignorance doth destroy the nature of spontaneity or voluntariness, by removing that knowledge which should and would have prohibited the action. As a man thinking to shoot a wild beast in a bush, shoots his friend, which if he had known, he would not have shot. This man did not kill his friend of his own accord.

“For the clearer understanding of these things, and to know what spontaneity is, let us consult awhile with the Schools about the distinct order of voluntary or involuntary actions. Some acts proceed wholly from an extrinsical cause; as the throwing of a stone upwards, a rape, or the drawing of a Christian by plain force to the idol’s temple; these are called violent acts. Secondly, some proceed from an intrinsical cause, but without any manner of knowledge of the end, as the falling of a stone downwards; these are called natural acts. Thirdly, some proceed from an internal principle, with an imperfect knowledge of the end, where there is an appetite to the object, but no deliberation nor election; as the acts of fools, children, beasts, and the inconsiderate acts of men of judgment. These are called voluntary or spontaneous acts. Fourthly, some proceed from an intrinsical cause, with a more perfect knowledge of the end, which are elected upon deliberation. These are called free acts. So then the formal reason of liberty is election. The necessary requisite to election is deliberation. Deliberation implyeth the actual use of reason. But deliberation and election cannot possibly subsist with an extrinsical predetermination to one. How should a man deliberate or choose which way to go, who knows that all ways are shut against him and made impossible to him, but only one? This is the genuine sense of these words _voluntary_ and _spontaneous_ in this question. Though they were taken twenty other ways vulgarly or metaphorically, as we say _spontaneous ulcers_, where there is no appetite at all, yet it were nothing to this controversy, which is not about words, but about things; not what the words voluntary or free do or may signify, but whether all things be extrinsically predetermined to one.

“These grounds being laid for clearing the true sense of the words, the next thing to be examined is, that contradiction which he hath espied in my discourse, or how this argument fights against his fellows. ‘If I,’ saith T. H., ‘make it appear, that the spontaneous actions of fools, children, madmen, and beasts, do proceed from election and deliberation, and that inconsiderate and indeliberate actions are found in the wisest men, then this argument concludes that necessity and election may stand together, which is contrary to his assertion.’ If this could be made appear as easily as it is spoken, it would concern himself much, who, when he should prove that rational men are not free from necessity, goes about to prove that brute beasts do deliberate and elect, that is as much as to say, are free from necessity. But it concerns not me at all; it is neither my assertion nor my opinion, that necessity and election may not meet together in the same subject; violent, natural, spontaneous, and deliberate or elective acts may all meet together in the same subject. But this I say, that necessity and election cannot consist together in the same act. He who is determined to one, is not free to choose out of more than one. To begin with his latter supposition, ‘that wise men may do inconsiderate and indeliberate actions,’ I do readily admit it. But where did he learn to infer a general conclusion from particular premises; as thus, because wise men do some indeliberate acts, therefore no act they do is free or elective? Secondly, for his former supposition, ‘that fools, children, madmen, and beasts, do deliberate and elect,’ if he could make it good, it is not I who contradict myself, nor fight against mine own assertion, but it is he who endeavours to prove that which I altogether deny. He may well find a contradiction between him and me; otherwise to what end is this dispute? But he shall not be able to find a difference between me and myself. But the truth is, he is not able to prove any such thing; and that brings me to my sixth consideration, that neither horses, nor bees, nor spiders, nor children, nor fools, nor madmen do deliberate or elect.

“His first instance is in the horse, or dog, but more especially the horse. He told me that I divided my argument into squadrons, to apply myself to your Lordship, being a military man; and I apprehend that for the same reason he gives his first instance of the horse, with a submission to your own experience. So far well, but otherwise very disadvantageously to his cause. Men used to say of a dull fellow, that he hath no more brains than a horse. And the Prophet David saith, (Psalm xxxii. 9): _Be not like the horse and mule, which have no understanding_. How do they deliberate without understanding? And (Psalm xlix. 20), he saith the same of all brute beasts: _Man being in honour had no understanding, but became like unto the beasts that perish_. The horse ‘demurs upon his way.’ Why not? Outward objects, or inward fancies, may produce a stay in his course, though he have no judgment either to deliberate or elect. ‘He retires from some strange figure which he sees, and comes on again to avoid the spur.’ So he may; and yet be far enough from deliberation. All this proceeds from the sensitive passion of fear, which is a perturbation arising from the expectation of some imminent evil. But he urgeth, ‘what else doth a man that deliberateth?’ Yes, very much. The horse feareth some outward object, but deliberation is a comparing of several means conducing to the same end. Fear is commonly of one, deliberation of more than one; fear is of those things which are not in our power, deliberation of those things which are in our power; fear ariseth many times out of natural antipathies, but in these disconveniences of nature deliberation hath no place at all. In a word, fear is an enemy to deliberation, and betrayeth the succours of the soul. If the horse did deliberate, he should consult with reason, whether it were more expedient for him to go that way or not; he would represent to himself all the dangers both of going and staying, and compare the one with the other, and elect that which is less evil; he should consider whether it were not better to endure a little hazard, than ungratefully and dishonestly to fail in his duty towards his master, who did breed him and doth feed him. This the horse doth not; neither is it possible for him to do it. Secondly, for children, T. H. confesseth that they may be so young that they do not deliberate at all; afterwards, as they attain to the use of reason by degrees, so by degrees they become free agents. Then they do deliberate; before they do not deliberate. The rod may be a means to make them use their reason, when they have power to exercise it, but the rod cannot produce the power before they have it. Thirdly, for fools and madmen, it is not to be understood of such madmen as have their _lucida intervalla_, who are mad and discreet by fits; when they have the use of reason, they are no madmen, but may deliberate as well as others; nor yet of such fools as are only comparative fools, that is, less wise than others. Such may deliberate, though not so clearly, nor so judiciously as others; but of mere madmen, and mere natural fools, to say that they, who have not the use of reason, do deliberate or use reason, implies a contradiction. But his chiefest confidence is in his bees and spiders, ‘of whose actions,’ he saith, ‘if I had been a spectator, I would have confessed, not only election, but also art, prudence, policy, very near equal to that of mankind, whose life, as Aristotle saith, is civil.’ Truly I have contemplated their actions many times, and have been much taken with their curious works; yet my thoughts did not reflect so much upon them, as upon their Maker, who is _sic magnus in magnis_, that he is not _minor in parvis_; so great in great things, that he is not less in small things. Yes, I have seen those silliest of creatures, and seeing their rare works I have seen enough to confute all the bold-faced atheists of this age, and their hellish blasphemies. I saw them, but I praised the marvellous works of God, and admired that great and first intellect, who hath both adapted their organs, and determined their fancies to these particular works. I was not so simple as to ascribe those rarities to their own invention, which I knew to proceed from a mere instinct of nature. In all other things they are the dullest of creatures. Naturalists write of bees, that their fancy is imperfect, not distinct from their common-sense, spread over their whole body, and only perceiving things present. When Aristotle calls them political or sociable creatures, he did not intend it really that they lived a civil life, but according to an analogy, because they do such things by instinct as truly political creatures do out of judgment. Nor when I read in St. Ambrose of their hexagons or sexangular cells, did I therefore conclude that they were mathematicians. Nor when I read in Crespet, that they invoke God to their aid when they go out of their hives, bending their thighs in form of a cross, and bowing themselves; did I therefore think that this was an act of religious piety, or that they were capable of theological virtues, whom I see in all other things in which their fancies are not determined, to be the silliest of creatures, strangers not only to right reason, but to all resemblances of it.

“Seventhly, concerning those actions which are done upon precedent and passed deliberations; they are not only spontaneous, but free acts. Habits contracted by use and experience, do help the will to act with more facility and more determinately, as the hand of the artificer is helped by his tools. And precedent deliberations, if they were sad and serious, and proved by experience to be profitable, do save the labour of subsequent consultations; _frustra fit per plura, quod fieri potest per pauciora_. Yet nevertheless the actions which are done by virtue of these formerly acquired habits, are no less free, than if the deliberation were coexistent with this particular action. He that hath gained an habit and skill to play such a lesson, needs not a new deliberation how to play every time that he plays it over and over. Yet I am far from giving credit to him in this, that walking or eating universally considered, are free actions, or proceed from true liberty; not so much because they want a particular deliberation before every individual act, as because they are animal motions and need no deliberation of reason, as we see in brute beasts. And nevertheless the same actions, as they are considered individually, and invested with their due circumstances, may be and often are free actions subjected to the liberty of the agent.

“Lastly, whereas T. H. compareth the first motions or rash attempts of choleric persons with such acquired habits, it is a great mistake. Those rash attempts are voluntary actions, and may be facilitated sometimes by acquired habits. But yet for as much as actions are often altered and varied by the circumstances of time, place, and person, so as that act which at one time is morally good, at another time may be morally evil; and for as much as a general precedent deliberation how to do this kind of action, is not sufficient to make this or that particular action good or expedient, which being in itself good, yet particular circumstances may render inconvenient or unprofitable to some persons, at some times, in some places: therefore a precedent general deliberation how to do any act, as for instance, how to write, is not sufficient to make a particular act, as my writing this individual reply, to be freely done, without a particular and subsequent deliberation. A man learns French advisedly; that is a free act. The same man in his choler and passion reviles his friend in French, without any deliberation; this is a spontaneous act, but it is not a free act. If he had taken time to advise, he would not have reviled his friend. Yet as it is not free, so neither is it so necessary as the bees making honey, whose fancy is not only inclined, but determined, by nature to that act. So every way he fails. And his conclusion, that the liberty of election doth not take away the necessity of electing this or that individual thing, is no consequent from my doctrine, but from his own. Neither do my arguments fight one against another, but his private opinions fight both against me and against an undoubted truth. A free agent endowed with liberty of election, or with an elective power, may nevertheless be necessitated in some individual acts, but those acts wherein he is necessitated, do not flow from his elective power, neither are those acts which flow from his elective power necessitated.”

ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP’S REPLY NO. VIII.

(_a_) “The first thing that I offer is, how often he mistakes my meaning in this one section. First, I make voluntary and spontaneous actions to be one and the same. He saith, I distinguish them,” &c.

It is very possible I may have mistaken him; for neither he nor I understand him. If they be one, why did he without need bring in this strange word, spontaneous? Or rather, why did the Schoolmen bring it in, if not merely to shift off the difficulty of maintaining their tenet of free-will?

(_b_) “Secondly, he saith I distinguish between free acts and voluntary acts; but he saith, I confound them and make them the same.”

In his reply No. II, he saith, that for the clearing of the question, we are to know the difference between these three, necessity, spontaneity, and liberty; and because I thought he knew that it could not be cleared without understanding what is will, I had reason to think that spontaneity was his new word for will. And presently after, “some things are necessary, and not voluntary or spontaneous; some things are both necessary and voluntary.” These words, voluntary and spontaneous, so put together, would make any man believe spontaneous were put as explicative of voluntary; for it is no wonder in the eloquence of the Schoolmen. Therefore, presently after, these words, “spontaneity consists in a conformity of the appetite, either intellectual or sensitive,” signify that spontaneity is a conformity or likeness of the appetite to the object; which to me soundeth as if he had said, that the appetite is like the object; which is as proper as if he had said, the hunger is like the meat. If this be the bishop’s meaning, as it is the meaning of the words, he is a very fine philosopher. But hereafter I will venture no more to say his meaning is this or that, especially where he useth terms of art.

(_c_) “Thirdly, he saith, I ascribe spontaneity only to fools, children, madmen, and beasts. But I acknowledge spontaneity hath place in rational men,” &c.

I resolve to have no more to do with spontaneity. But I desire the reader to take notice, that the common people, on whose arbitration dependeth the signification of words in common use, among the Latins and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause, spontaneous and αυτοματα: I say, not those actions which had no causes; for all actions have their causes; but those actions whose causes they did not perceive. So that spontaneous, as a general name, comprehended many actions and motions of inanimate creatures; as the falling of heavy things downwards, which they thought spontaneous, and that if they were not hindered, they would descend of their _own accord_. It comprehended also all animal motion, as beginning from the will or appetite; because the causes of the will and appetite being not perceived, they supposed, as the Bishop doth, that they were the causes of themselves. So that which in general is called spontaneous, being applied to men and beasts in special, is called voluntary. Yet the will and appetite, though the very same thing, use to be distinguished in certain occasions. For in the public conversation of men, where they are to judge of one another’s will, and of the regularity and irregularity of one another’s actions, not every appetite, but the last is esteemed in the public judgment for the will: nor every action proceeding from appetite, but that only to which there had preceded or ought to have preceded some deliberation. And this I say is so, when one man is to judge of another’s will. For every man in himself knoweth that what he desireth or hath an appetite to, the same he hath a will to, though his will may be changed before he hath obtained his desire. The Bishop, understanding nothing of this, might, if it had pleased him, have called it jargon. But he had rather pick out of it some contradictions of myself. And therefore saith:

(_d_) “Yet I have no reason to be offended at it, (meaning such contradictions), for he dealeth no otherwise with me than he doth with himself.”

It is a contradiction, he saith, that having said that “voluntary presupposeth deliberation,” I say in another place, “that whatsoever followeth the last appetite, is voluntary, and where there is but one appetite, that is the last.” Not observing that _voluntary_ presupposeth _deliberation_, when the judgment, whether the action be voluntary or not, is not in the actor, but in the judge; who regardeth not the will of the actor, where there is nothing to be accused in the action of deliberate malice; yet knoweth that though there be but one appetite, the same is truly will for the time, and the action, if it follow, a voluntary action.

This also he saith is a contradiction, that having said, “no action of a man can be said to be without deliberation, though never so sudden,” I say afterward that “by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding.”

Again he observes not, that the action of a man that is not a child, in public judgment how rash, inconsiderate, and sudden soever it be, it is to be taken for deliberation; because it is supposed, he ought to have considered and compared his intended action with the law; when, nevertheless, that sudden and indeliberate action was truly voluntary.

Another contradiction which he finds is this, that having undertaken to prove “that children before they have the use of reason do deliberate and elect,” I say by and by after a “child may be so young as to do what he doth without all deliberation.” I yet see no contradiction here; for a child may be so young, as that the appetite thereof is its first appetite, but afterward and often before it come to have the use of reason, may elect one thing and refuse another, and consider the consequences of what it is about to do. And why not as well as beasts, which never have the use of reason; for they deliberate, as men do? For though men and beasts do differ in many things very much, yet they differ not in the nature of their deliberation. A man can reckon by words of general signification, make propositions, and syllogisms, and compute in numbers, magnitudes, proportions, and other things computable; which being done by the advantage of language, and words of general significations, a beast that hath not language cannot do, nor a man that hath language, if he misplace the words, that are his counters. From hence to the end of this number, he discourseth again of spontaneity, and how it is in children, madmen, and beasts; which, as I before resolved, I will not meddle with; let the reader think and judge of it as he pleaseth.

NO. IX.

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]