6. Nor does Liberty, as here defined, imply, that the mind, antecedently
to all acts of Will, shall be in a state of _indifference_, unimpelled
by feeling, or the affirmations of the Intelligence, more strongly in
one direction than another. The Will exists in a tri-unity with the
Intelligence and Sensibility. Its determinations may be in harmony with
the Sensibility, in opposition to Intelligence, or with the Intelligence
in opposition to the Sensibility. But while it follows either in
distinction from the other, under the same identical influences,
different and opposite determinations are equally possible. However the
Will may be influenced, whether its determinations are in the direction
of the strongest impulse, or opposed to it, it never, in deliberate
moral determination, puts forth particular acts, because, that in these
circumstances, no others are possible. In instances comparatively few,
can we suppose that the mind, antecedently to acts of Will, is in a
state of indifference, unimpelled in one direction in distinction from
others, or equally impelled in the direction of different and opposite
determinations. Indifference is in no such sense an essential or
material condition of Liberty. How ever strongly the Will may be
impelled in the direction of particular determinations, it is still in
the possession of the highest conceivable freedom, if it is not thereby
_necessitated_ to act in one direction in distinction from all others.
7. I now refer to one other fixed law under the influence of which the
Will is always necessitated to act. It is the law of _habit_. Action in
any one direction always generates a tendency to subsequent action in
the same direction under similar influences. This tendency may be
increased, till it becomes so strong as to render action in the same
direction in all future time really, although contingently, certain. The
certainty thus granted will always be of such a nature as consists fully
with the relation of Liberty. It can never, while moral agency
continues, come under the relation of Necessity. Still the certainty is
real. Thus the mind, by a continued course of well or ill doing, may
generate such fixed habits, as to render subsequent action in the same
direction perfectly certain, during the entire progress of its future
being. Every man, while conscious of freedom, should be fully aware of
the existence of this law, and it should surely lead him to walk
thoughtfully along the borders of "the undiscovered country," his
location in which he is determining by the habits of thought, feeling,
and action, he is now generating.
STRONGEST MOTIVE--REASONING IN A CIRCLE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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