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
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 looseness 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 (or
a _Velleity_ as it is called in the schools), even on that side on
which it did not settle.
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