INQUIRY, ETC. ETC. PART I. WHEREIN ARE EXPLAINED AND STATED VARIOUS TERMS AND THINGS BELONGING TO THE SUBJECT OF THE ENSUING DISCOURSE. SECTION I. CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THE WILL. Ir may possibly be thought, that there is no great need of going about to define or describe the will; this word being generally as well understood as any other words we can use to explain it and so, perhaps, it would be, had not philosophers, metaphysicians, and polemic divines, brought the matter into obscurity by the things they have said of it. But since it is so, I think it may be of some use, and will tend to the greater clearness in the following discourse, to say a few things concerning it. And therefore I observe, that the will (without any metaphysical refining) is plainly, that by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the will is that faculty or power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice. If any think it is a more perfect definition of the will to say, that, It is that by which the soul B : either chooses or refuses, I am content with it; though I think that it is enough to say, It is that by which the soul chooses for in every act of will whatsoever, the mind chooses one thing rather than another; it chooses something rather than the contrary, or rather than the want or non-existence of that thing. So, in every act of refusal, the mind chooses the absence of the thing refused; the positive and the negative are set before the mind for its choice, and it chooses the negative; and the mind's making its choice in that case is properly the act of the will; the will's determining between the two is a voluntary determining, but that is the same thing as making a choice. So that whatever names we call the act of the will by, choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, embracing, rejecting, determining, directing, commanding, forbidding, inclining, or being averse, a being pleased or displeased with; all may be reduced to this of choosing. For the soul to act voluntarily, is evermore to act electively. Mr. Locke says, "The will signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose." And in the foregoing page says, "The word preferring seems best to express the act of volition;" but adds, that "it does it not precisely; for, (says he,) though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it?" But the instance he mentions does not prove that there is any thing else in willing but merely preferring; for it should be considered what is the next and immediate object of the will, with respect to a man's walking, or any other external * Human Understanding. Edit. 7, vol. i. p. 197. action; which is, not being removed from one place to another, on the earth or through the air-these are remoter objects of preferencebut such or such an immediate exertion of himself. The thing nextly chosen or preferred when a man wills to walk, is, not his being removed to such a place where he would be, but such an exertion and motion of his legs and feet, &c. in order to it. And his willing such an alteration in his body in the present moment, is nothing else but his choosing or preferring such an alteration in his body at such a moment, or his liking it better than the forbearance of it. And God has so made and established the human nature, the soul being united to a body in proper state, that the soul preferring or choosing such an immediate exertion or alteration of the body, such an alteration instantaneously follows. There is nothing else in the actions of my mind, that I am conscious of while I walk, but only my preferring or choosing, through successive moments, that there should be such alterations of my external sensations and motions, together with a concurring habitual expectation that it will be so; having ever found by experience, that on such an immediate preference, such sensations and motions do actually instantaneously and constantly arise. But it is not so in the case of flying; though a man may be said remotely to choose or prefer flying, yet he does not choose or prefer, incline to, or desire, under circumstances in view, any immediate exertion of the members of his body in order to it, because he has no expectation that he should obtain the desired end by any such exertion; and he does not prefer or incline |