14. Liberty belongs not to the will.
If this be so, (as I imagine it is,) I leave it to be considered, whether it may not
help to put an end to that long agitated, and, I think, unreasonable, because unintelligible question, viz., Whether
man's will be free or no? For if I mistake not, it follows from what I have said, that the question itself is altogether
improper; and it is as insignificant to ask whether man's will be free, as to ask whether his sleep be swift, or his
virtue square: liberty being as little applicable to the will, as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to
virtue. Every one would laugh at the absurdity of such a question as either of these: because it is obvious that the
modifications of motion belong not to sleep, nor the difference of figure to virtue; and when one well considers it,
I think he will as plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an
attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power.
