78 IVOLUTIOX OF LIFE. 



LOCKE'S book, that have a tendency to favor the 

 doctrine, " that human actions are the result 

 of a necessity, which the individual cannot pre- 

 vent," it is not, however, always the case ; on 

 many occasions, he is either driven or led to 

 acknowledge the free agency of man : " This 

 I think," says Mr. LOCKE, " is at least evident, 

 that we find in ourselves a power to begin or 

 forbear, continue or end, several actions of our 

 minds, or motions of our bodies, barely by a 

 thought or preference of the mind, ordering, or, 

 as it were, commanding the doing, or not doing, 

 such or such a particular action. The power 

 which the mind has, thus to order the conside- 

 ration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider 

 it, or to prefer the motion of any part of the body 

 to its rest, and vice versa, in any particular in- 

 stance, is what we call the will.'' It is the parti- 

 cular nature of this intellectual power in man. 

 which constitutes the distinguishing character- 

 istic between excellence and mediocrity, that 

 ought to mark out the individual from the spe- 

 cies, the man from the brute, and form the 

 real source of distinction in the attributes by 

 which different men ought to be estimated. It is 

 to the motives which spring and originate from 

 the mind, more than from the effects which are 

 produced by the organs as the instruments, that 

 we ought to attach merit or disgrace to them for 

 the actions they perform. It is from principles 



