One of the notions to which the cause of necessity owes much of its strength, is a false conception of liberty, as consisting in “a power over the determinations of the will.” Hence it is said that this power over the will can do nothing, can cause no determination except by acting to produce it. But according to this notion of liberty, this causative act cannot be free unless it be also caused by a preceding act; and so on _ad infinitum_. Such is one of the favourite arguments of the necessitarian. But in truth the freedom of the mind does not consist in its possessing a power over the determinations of its own will, for the true notion of freedom is a negative idea, and consists in the absence of every power over the determinations of the will. The mind is free because it possesses a power of acting, over which there is no controlling power, either within or without itself. It must be admitted, it seems to us, that the advocates of free-agency have too often sanctioned this false conception of liberty, and thereby strengthened the cause of their opponents. Cudworth, Clark, Stuart, Coleridge, and Reid, all speak of this supposed power of the mind over the determinations of the will, as that which constitutes its freedom. Thus says Reid, for example: “By the liberty of a moral agent, I understand a power over the determinations of his own will.” Now, it is not at all strange that this language should be conceived by necessitarians in such a manner as to involve the doctrine of liberty in the absurd consequence of an infinite series of acts, since it is so understood by some of the most enlightened advocates of free-agency themselves. “A power over the determinations of our will,” says Sir William Hamilton, “supposes an act of the will that our will should determine so and so; for we can only exert power through a rational determination or volition. _This definition of liberty is right._ But the question upon question remains, (and this _ad infinitum_)—have we a power (a will) over such anterior will? and until this question be definitively answered, which it never can, we must be _unable to conceive the possibility of the fact of liberty_. But, though inconceivable, this fact is not therefore false.” True, we are unable to conceive the possibility of the fact of liberty, if this must be conceived as consisting in a power over the determinations of the will; but, in our humble opinion, this definition of liberty is not right. It seems more correct to say, that the freedom of the will consists in the absence of a power over its determinations, than in the presence of such a power.