X VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 219 



place in voluntary 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 ineradic- 

 able 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 accounted 

 for from another cause, viz. a false sensation, or seeming experi- 

 ence, 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 con- 

 sider the action ; and it consists 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 of that determination, and a certain loose- 

 ness or indifference 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 are 

 commonly able to infer them with considerable certainty from 

 their motives, and from the dispositions of the agent ; yet it 

 frequently happens that in performing the actions themselves, 

 we are sensible of something like it : And as all resembling 

 objects are taken for each other, this has been employed as 

 demonstrative and even intuitive proof of human liberty. We 

 feel that our actions are subject to our will on most occasions ; 

 and imagine we feel, that the will itself is subject to nothing, 

 because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we feel 

 that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself 



