484 GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON 



the understanding in man." We have here to learn, either 

 that "the understanding which constitutes the human 

 soul" has no will, and therefore no responsibility, since I 

 suppose it cannot be contended that the soul is responsible 

 for what it has not willed ; or that every man is endowed 

 with two wills, that of his understanding, and that of his 

 life of volition. It must be an important, if not a pleasant 

 speculation, for our author to know which of his two wills 

 is implicated in his faults, since, if he can contrive to fix 

 them all on the principle of volition, which is mortal, his 

 understanding will come well off. It deserves remark, that 

 Mr. Locke was afraid that persons would fall into this 

 very mistake, although he had distinctly shown that intel- 

 lect and will are only powers of the mind. " These pow- 

 ers of the mind," he says, " viz, of perceiving and prefer- 

 ring, are usually called by another name; and the ordinary 

 way of speaking is, that the understanding and will are two 

 faculties of the mind ; a word proper enough, if it be used, 

 as all words should be, so as not to breed any confusion 

 in men's thoughts by being supposed (as 1 suspect it has 

 been) to stand for real beings in the soul that performed 

 those actions of understanding and volition." But the 

 whole of the new theory seems hastily got up ; for we have 

 volition sometimes a power, sometimes an immaterial prin- 

 ciple, while in general it is supposed to mean the act of 

 willing. From all which I know not what inference to 

 draw, unless that we are to believe the principle that wills, 

 the power to will, and the act of willing, to be all one and 

 the same thing. 



6. The reader has now doubtless had sufficient of this 

 improvement upon Locke, and will not be sorry to have 

 another theory set before him, which, although I scarcely 



