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liberty. Liberty then has to do with the will. I am not here 
concerned with the freedom of the will, the power of willing as we 
will, opposed to necessity. I am speaking of the power of acting 
as we will, and in speaking of acts, I mean acts of the mind as well 
as the body. This power of acting as we will is the essence of 
mental liberty expressed or implied in all the definitions of it that 
I am acquainted with. "In this consists freedom, " says Locke, 
1 ' in our being able to act or not to act according as we shall choose 
or will." It is "a right," according to Eeid, "to act one way 
or another;" and "it is evident," he adds, "that this liberty 
extends to the will." The scholastic definition is to the same 
effect, that liberty lies in "the power of acting by oneself," motu 
proprio, of one's own accord or will. According to Cicero, it is 
" the power of living as you will." 
If liberty then has to do with the will, and the opposition of 
law to liberty is not essential, but accidental only, we may 
suppose two ways of removing the opposition, the first being by 
the abrogation of the law, and the second by bringing the will 
into accord with the law. This is the case whether the law is 
civil or moral, or what we call a law of nature. The mind may 
be called free where it is subject to no law, or, on the other hand, 
where its will is so entirely in accord with the law that there is no 
opposition between them ; the law does not interfere with its 
power of doing as it wills. 
The former of these suppositions, the removal of restraint by the 
abrogation of law, is what appears to be the popular notion of 
intellectual liberty. It is certainly the idea of Mr. Mill's Essay. 
The principles which he lays down involve the entire removal 
of all restraint upon opinion and sentiment, moral and religious 
penalties being excluded by them as completely as purely civil 
penalties. The popular notion certainly does not go to this extent, 
but it differs only in being less thorough, because less consistent. 
Is this popular notion the true idea of intellectual liberty ? Does 
this liberty consist in the abrogation of law ? If this is the true 
idea of intellectual freedom, and if freedom is a good in itself, as 
we have seen it is declared to be by the common voice of mankind, 
and certainly by the unanimous consent of those who take this 
which I have called the popular view of it, then the more complete 
this freedom is, — the more entire the removal of everything which 
interferes with the mind's power of doing as it will, the better. But 
