24. Liberty is freedom to execute what is willed.
This, then, is evident, That a man is not at liberty to will, or not
to will, anything in his power that he once considers of: liberty consisting in a power to act or to forbear acting,
and in that only. For a man that sits still is said yet to be at liberty; because he can walk if he wills it. A man that
walks is at liberty also, not because he walks or moves; but because he can stand still if he wills it. But if a man
sitting still has not a power to remove himself, he is not at liberty; so likewise a man falling down a precipice,
though in motion, is not at liberty, because he cannot stop that motion if he would. This being so, it is plain that a
man that is walking, to whom it is proposed to give off walking, is not at liberty, whether he will determine
himself to walk, or give off walking or not: he must necessarily prefer one or the other of them; walking or not
walking. And so it is in regard of all other actions in our power so proposed, which are the far greater number.
For, considering the vast number of voluntary actions that succeed one another every moment that we are awake
in the course of our lives, there are but few of them that are thought on or proposed to the will, till the time they
are to be done; and in all such actions, as I have shown, the mind, in respect of willing, has not a power to act or
not to act, wherein consists liberty. The mind, in that case, has not a power to forbear willing; it cannot avoid
some determination concerning them, let the consideration be as short, the thought as quick as it will, it either
leaves the man in the state he was before thinking, or changes it; continues the action, or puts an end to it.
Whereby it is manifest, that it orders and directs one, in preference to, or with neglect of the other, and thereby
either the continuation or change becomes unavoidably voluntary.
