x VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 223 



versally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prison- 

 er and in chains. Here then is no subject of dispute." 

 (IV. p. 111.) 



Half the controversies about the freedom of the 

 will would have had no existence, if this pithy 

 paragraph had been well pondered by those who 

 oppose the doctrine of necessity. For they^ rest 

 upon the absurd presumption that the proposition, 

 " I can do as I like," is contradictory to the doc- 

 trine of necessity. The answer is; nobody-doubts 

 that, at any rate within certain limits, you can do 

 as you like. But what determines your likings and 

 dislikings? Did you make your own constitution? 

 Is it your contrivance that one thing is pleasant 

 and another is painful? And even if it were, why 

 did you prefer to make it after the one fashion 

 rather than the other? The passionate assertion 

 of the consciousness of their freedom, which is the 

 favourite refuge of the opponents of the doctrine 

 of necessity, is mere futility, for nobody denies it. 

 What they really have to do, if they would up- 

 set the necessarian argument, is to prove that 

 they are free to associate any emotion whatever 

 with any idea whatever; to like pain as much as 

 pleasure; vice as much as virtue; in short, to 

 prove, that, whatever may be the fixity of order of 

 the universe of things, that of thought is given 

 over to chance. 



In the second part of this remarkable essay, 

 Hume considers the real, or supposed, immoral 



