74. Active and passive power, in motions and in thinking.
True notions concerning the nature and extent of liberty
are of so great importance, that I hope I shall be pardoned this digression, which my attempt to explain it has led
me into. The ideas of will, volition, liberty, and necessity, in this Chapter of Power, came naturally in my way. In
a former edition of this Treatise I gave an account of my thoughts concerning them, according to the light I then
had. And now, as a lover of truth, and not a worshipper of my own doctrines, I own some change of my opinion;
which I think I have discovered ground for. In what I first writ, I with an unbiased indifferency followed truth,
whither I thought she led me. But neither being so vain as to fancy infallibility, nor so disingenuous as to
dissemble my mistakes for fear of blemishing my reputation, I have, with the same sincere design for truth only,
not been ashamed to publish what a severer inquiry has suggested. It is not impossible but that some may think
my former notions right; and some (as I have already found) these latter; and some neither. I shall not at all
wonder at this variety in men's opinions: impartial deductions of reason in controverted points being so rare, and
exact ones in abstract notions not so very easy, especially if of any length. And, therefore, I should think myself
not a little beholden to any one, who would, upon these or any other grounds, fairly clear this subject of liberty
from any difficulties that may yet remain.
Before I close this chapter, it may perhaps be to our purpose, and help to give us clearer conceptions about power,
if we make our thoughts take a little more exact survey of action. I have said above, that we have ideas but of two
sorts of action, viz., motion and thinking. These, in truth, though called and counted actions, yet, if nearly
considered, will not be found to be always perfectly so. For, if I mistake not, there are instances of both kinds,
which, upon due consideration, will be found rather passions than actions; and consequently so far the effects
barely of passive powers in those subjects, which yet on their accounts are thought agents. For, in these instances,
the substance that hath motion or thought receives the impression, whereby it is put into that action, purely from
without, and so acts merely by the capacity it has to receive such an impression from some external agent; and
such power is not properly an active power, but a mere passive capacity in the subject. Sometimes the substance
or agent puts itself into action by its own power, and this is properly active power. Whatsoever modification a
substance has, whereby it produces any effect, that is called action: v.g. a solid substance, by motion, operates on
or alters the sensible ideas of another substance, and therefore this modification of motion we call action. But yet
this motion in that solid substance is, when rightly considered, but a passion, if it received it only from some
external agent. So that the active power of motion is in no substance which cannot begin motion in itself or in
another substance when at rest. So likewise in thinking, a power to receive ideas or thoughts from the operation of
any external substance is called a power of thinking: but this is but a passive power, or capacity. But to be able to
bring into view ideas out of sight at one's own choice, and to compare which of them one thinks fit, this is an
active power. This reflection may be of some use to preserve us from mistakes about powers and actions, which
grammar, and the common frame of languages, may be apt to lead us into. Since what is signified by verbs that
grammarians call active, does not always signify action: v.g. this proposition: I see the moon, or a star, or I feel
the heat of the sun, though expressed by a verb active, does not signify any action in me, whereby I operate on
those substances, but only the reception of the ideas of light, roundness, and heat; wherein I am not active, but
barely passive, and cannot, in that position of my eyes or body, avoid receiving them. But when I turn my eyes
another way, or remove my body out of the sunbeams, I am properly active; because of my own choice, by a
power within myself, I put myself into that motion. Such an action is the product of active power.
