x VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 221 



motive and the action; they are thence apt to suppose, 

 that there is a difference between the effects which result 

 from material force, and those which arise from thought 

 and intelligence. But, being once convinced, that we know 

 nothing of causation of any kind, than merely the constant 

 conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of the 

 mind from one to another, and finding that these two cir- 

 cumstances are universally allowed to have place in volun- 

 tary actions ; we may be more easily led to own the same 

 necessity common to all causes." (IV. pp. 107, 8.) 



The last asylum of the hard-pressed advocate of 

 the doctrine of uncaused volition is usually, that, 

 argue as you like, he has a profound and ineradi- 

 cable consciousness of what he calls the freedom of 

 his will. But Hume follows him even here, 

 though only in a note, as if he thought the ex- 

 tinction of so transparent a sophism hardly worthy 

 of the dignity of his text. 



" The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be ac- 

 counted for from another cause, viz., a false sensation, or 

 seeming experience, which we have or may have, of liberty 

 or indifference in many of our actions. The necessity of 

 any action, whether of matter or of mind, is not, properly 

 speaking, a quality in the agent, but in any thinking or 

 intelligent being who may consider the action ; and it con- 

 sists chiefly in the determination of his thoughts to infer 

 the existence of that action from some preceding objects ; 

 as liberty, when opposed to necessity, is nothing but the 

 want "oT that determination, and a certain looseness or in- 

 difference which we feel in passing, or not passing, from 

 the idea of any object to the idea of any succeeding one. 

 Now we may observe that though, in reflecting on human 

 actions, we seldom feel such looseness or indifference, but 



