A Treatise of Freewill

Summary

Chapter I

We seem clearly to be led by the instincts of nature to think that there is something ἐφʾ ἡµĩν, in nostra potestate, in our own power (though dependently upon God Almighty), and that we are not altogether passive in our actings, nor determined by inevitable necessity in whatsoever we do. Because we praise and dispraise, commend and blame men for their actings, much otherwise than we do inanimate beings or brute animals. When we blame or commend a clock or automaton, we do it so as not imputing to that automaton its being the cause of its own moving well or ill, agreeably or disagreeably to the end it was designed for, this being ascribed by us only to the artificer. But when we blame a man for any wicked actions, as for taking away another man's life, either by perjury or by wilful murder, we blame him not only as doing otherwise than ought to have been done, but also than he might have done, and that it was possible for him to have avoided it, so that he was himself the cause of the evil thereof. We do not impute the evil of all men's wicked actions to God the creator and maker of them, after the same manner as we do the faults of a clock or watch wholly to the watchmaker.