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Why, by simply producing the old effete notion of the liberty of the will, as consisting in freedom from co-action; as if it had never been, and never could be, called in question. “Every action performed without external restraint,” says he, “and in pursuance of the determination of the soul itself, is a free action.” This demonstration, it is needless to repeat, would save any scheme of fatalism from reproach, as well as the doctrine of the reformers.
But to do justice to these illustrious men, they did not attempt, as many of their followers have done, to pass off this freedom from external co-action for the freedom of the will. Indeed, neither of them contended for the freedom of the will at all, nor deemed such freedom requisite to render men accountable for their actions.
But that which has no will cannot be the subject of these things.” This definition, it is plain, presupposes the existence of a volition; and liberty consists in the absence of co-action. It has no relation to the question as to how we come by our volitions, whether they are put forth by the mind itself without being necessitated, or whether they are necessarily produced in us.
Let a man come by his volition ANY HOW; let it be produced in him by the direct and almighty power of God himself; yet, “he is perfectly free,” provided there is no external co-action to prevent his volition from producing its natural effects!
Calvin truly says, that to call this external freedom from co-action or natural necessity a freedom of the will, is to decorate a most diminutive thing with a superb title; but the philosopher of Malmsbury, and his ingenious disciple, seem disposed to confer the high-sounding title and empty name on us, in order to reconcile us to the servitude and chains in which they have been pleased to bind us.
This natural necessity, or co-action, it is admitted on all hands, destroys accountability for external conduct, wherever it obtains. Indeed, if a man is compelled to do a thing against his will, this is not, properly speaking, his act at all; nor is it an omission of his, if he wills to do a thing, and is necessarily prevented from doing it by external restraint.
Though they allow a freedom from co-action, they repudiate the idea of calling this a freedom of the will. “Lombard at length pronounces,” says Calvin, “that we are not therefore possessed of free-will, because we have an equal power to do or to think either good or evil, but only because we are free from constraint.
To have it in a test-tube, indeed to possess it in large quantities in bottles, to be able to manipulate and examine it without fear of the co-action of admixed impurities, to see it with the eye, and to taste it with the tongue, was truly a marvel. The miracle aroused at once scores of researches.
Hence the question arises, Has he left any room for the introduction of that freedom of the mind, which it is the great object of his inquiry to establish upon its true foundations? The liberty for which he contends, is, after all his labours, precisely that advocated by Hobbes and Collins, and no other. It is a freedom from co-action, and not from necessity.
Locke, it is well known, adopted the notions of free-agency given by Hobbes. “In this,” says he, “consists freedom, viz., in our being able to act or not to act, according as we shall choose or will.” And this notion of liberty, consisting in a freedom from external co-action, has received an impetus and currency from the influence of Locke which it would not otherwise have obtained.
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