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Updated: June 28, 2025
The opponents of Epicurus derided this auxiliary hypothesis; they affirmed that he invented the individual deflection of each atom, without assigning any cause, and only because he was perplexed by the mystery of man's free-will. But Epicurus was not more open to attack on this ground than other physical philosophers.
It was in vain that Pontchartrain objected to the project, as one from which only trifling benefit could be derived, and which would do great injury to France by acting as a proclamation of its embarrassed state to all the world, at home and abroad. The King would not listen to his reasonings, but declared himself willing to receive all the plate that was sent to him as a free-will offering.
Like vultures, they stooped upon the territories of the ecclesiastical princes, and always chose those rich countries for their quarters, though to reach them they must make ever so wide a detour from their direct route. They levied contributions as in an enemy's country, seized upon the revenues, and exacted, by violence, what they could not obtain of free-will.
They have differed from Christianity in that their predestinating, determining force, instead of being qualified by any play of free-will, or any feasible plan of ultimate and superabounding good, has been a real fatalism, changeless, hopeless, remorseless.
Priestley, pursues precisely the same course. “If a man,” says he, “be wholly a material being, and the power of thinking the result of a certain organization of the brain, does it not follow that all his functions must be regulated by the laws of mechanism, and that of consequence his actions proceed from an irresistible necessity?” And again, he observes, “the doctrine of necessity is the immediate result of the materiality of man, for mechanism is the undoubted consequence of materialism.” Priestley, however, allows us to possess free-will as defined by Hobbes, Locke, and Hartley.
But I contend, upon the other hand, for a limited free-will in the sphere of consciousness; and as it is in and by my consciousness that I exist to myself, I will not go on to inquire whether that free-will is valid as against the author, the newspaper, or even the readers of the story.
This belongs to our liberties, and has for its Watch Free-will. And this gate is so strong that nor demon nor creature can open it if the watch does not consent. And while this gate is not open that is, while it does not consent to what Memory and Intellect and the other gates experience our city keeps its free privileges for ever.
She ought not to find in this compulsory submission any excuse for yielding to a lover, because some time after her marriage she has discovered in her own heart a traitor whose sophisms seduce her by asking twenty times an hour, "Wherefore, since she has been given against her will to a man whom she does not love, should she not give herself, of her own free-will, to a man whom she does love."
"But I am a Baptist," persisted the Deacon, "and have bin for 30 year regular, free-will, close-communion, total-immersion Baptist. We have some Campbellites, a few Six Principle Baptists, and some Hard Shells, but the heft of us air jest plain, straight-out Baptists. But, speakin' o' cold water, kin you give me a drink? I'm powerful dry."
"Nay, thou shalt not need," said the traveller; "if it indeed be as thou sayest, I will follow thee of free-will the rather that I am not wholly unskilled in leech-craft, and have in my scrip that which may do thy friend a service Yet walk more slowly, I pray thee, for I am already well-nigh forespent with travel."
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